Yet to be officially announced, the service would be Apple’s biggest push into automatically recurring sales LONDON: Apple is reportedly working on a hardware subscription service which will allow customers to purchase iPhones and iPads in a similar manner to paying a monthly app fee. Yet to be officially announced, the service would be Apple’s biggest push into automatically recurring sales, allowing users to subscribe to hardware for the first time rather than just digital services. The idea is to make the process of buying an iPhone or iPad similar to that of paying for iCloud storage or an Apple Music subscription each month. Apple would then, it is though, let customers subscribe to hardware items with the same Apple ID and App Store accounts they use to buy apps and subscribe to services with. The company has increasingly promoted recurring subscriptions like Apple Music, Apple TV Plus, Apple News Plus, Apple Fitness Plus, and Apple Arcade as key new revenue streams. Reports say adopting a hardware subscription service would be a major strategy shift for Apple, which has generally sold devices at full cost outright. Such a service might help it generate more revenue and make it easier for consumers to afford spending thousands of dollars on new devices. It is also possible that Apple is simply looking to cut out the middleman and expand its instalment-based payment offerings to other products. Over the years, Apple has offered several instalment programs to split up the cost of devices, though not with a subscription model.