On March 1, Apple will start charging an extra $20 for battery replacements on out-of-warranty iPhones, according to an update on the AppleCare+ webpage.
The new price will be $99 for the iPhone 14, and while these models are currently under warranty, they won't be after the one-year anniversary of their release in September 2023.
At that point, the higher price point could encourage customers with broken batteries to simply buy a new phone rather than shell out nearly $100 for a replacement part.
Apple has adjusted prices multiple times in recent years, as supply chain issues have raised production costs. Just last month, labor unrest at an iPhone supplier in China led to a production shortfall. The company struggled with similar disruptions throughout the pandemic.
There is also a history of consumers pushing back against Apple's practices around batteries. The company in 2020 was forced to pay $113 million in fines to settle consumer fraud lawsuits around a controversy known as "batterygate," in which iPhone users discovered that Apple installed new software that made devices with older batteries operate slower.
In addition, CEO Tim Cook in 2019 wrote in a letter to investors that "some customers taking advantage of significantly reduced pricing for iPhone battery replacements" was partly behind a lower-than-expected iPhone sales.
From Wall Street to Silicon Valley, these are the top stories that moved markets and had investors, business leaders, and entrepreneurs talking this week on Cheddar.
Amazon says it will extend its ban on police use of its face-recognition technology beyond the one-year pause it announced last year.
China has landed a spacecraft on Mars for the first time in the latest step forward for its ambitious space program.
U.S. telecom giant AT&T Inc. is combining its WarnerMedia operations with Discovery Inc.
Cheddar explains why some European countries are building new bicycle superhighways and how it'll transform their transportation landscape.
A once-ambitious Facebook-backed digital currency project — formerly known as Libra, now called Diem — is shifting operations from Switzerland to the U.S.
Electric car maker Tesla will stop accepting Bitcoin as a payment. That's according to a tweet Wednesday from CEO Elon Musk, who cited environmental concerns surrounding the cryptocurrency.
Mattio Communications CEO and founder Rosie Mattio talks about why Clubhouse has taken off among cannabis industry insiders.
The Florida city's appeal to outside companies isn't limited to the world of crypto, but to tech writ large.
With the pandemic shifting consumer behavior even more online, this year’s NewsFront virtual festivities marked changing habits that are here to stay.
