Apple Prime

Today I was reading about Disney pulling their content from Netflix and streaming's disruption of the cable industry, which prompted a thought about how Apple could further embed customers into their ecosystem. Apple is in a position to launch their own version of Amazon Prime. Instead of 2-day delivery, it would be a better way to pay for your iPhone.Say you pay $129/month and for that, you can get a new iPhone every year + apple music, apple streaming (which doesn't exist...yet), 250gb of iCloud storage and potentially access to certain paid apps for free. There are dozens of other things they could add on to keep you more and more hooked in their ecosystem.

All of the other Apple devices would either be bought or could be added on to the plan. For example, you can get a new iPad every year for an extra $50/month. 

But you would also WANT to buy them because it keeps the devices in your house working seamlessly together.

Oh, and your phone bill would go away. Because they would buy a cellular provider.To buy out T-Mobile at a 30% premium (about $66b as of 8.10.17) would only use ~26% of their cash on hand. The cost to Apple could go up some depending on how much of that cash they would have to bring back to the US and pay taxes on.

This line of thinking gets REALLY interesting when you consider that they could buy T-Mobile AND Disney, and not exhaust their cash.

This would allow them to be the sole provider of ESPN, ABC, Pixar, Marvel and Star Wars. 

So for roughly the price of your cable bill, you would get:

• An iPhone that I could upgrade each year
• Apple Music (this is the only way I would leave Spotify)
• Apple Streaming with live sports via ESPN, Pixar Movies, and Star Wars (This would be the final coffin in cable, for me)
• iCloud Storage for the music, movies and shows I decide to download and watch offline. 
• Eliminate your phone bill
• Potentially extra perks like free or discounted premium apps

This strategy would send Apple on the fast(er) path to becoming a trillion dollar market cap company, put AT&T and Verizon on notice, hasten the death of cable providers and help ward off Amazon's push into devices. 

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