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.
Cruise, the autonomous-vehicle company backed by General Motors and Honda, unveiled the Origin on Tuesday which it says is the first self-driving vehicle designed from the ground-up to get from here to there without a driver.
Investors were eager to see how the company fared following the launch of Disney+ and AppleTV+ in November and in light of the upcoming launch of NBCUniversal’s Peacock streaming service.
CoinTracker, a startup that helps people calculate their taxes on crypto holdings, is introducing a free tier of service for users with less than 200 crypto transactions in a tax year as the IRS makes turns its attention to investors in “virtual currencies.”
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.
Greg Marsh, CEO of key duplication service KeyMe, wants his company to become the most trusted name in locksmithing and just got a boost from a $35 million round of fundraising.
The tech industry in the City of Angels is booming and Dot.La, a new digital media startup, wants to tell its story.
Atom Finance is challenging Bloomberg — whose eponymous terminal continues to dominate trading floors — by trying to develop a simpler product offering the depth of information that an institutional product might offer, but without a price tag that would break the bank for retail investors.
Here are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Friday, January 17, 2020.
Comcast announced more details about its upcoming service Peacock at a special investor presentation Thursday.
The UK-based startup Arrival, which is building small- and medium-sized electric vans for deliveries and other commercial roles, announced this week that it’s attracted a $110 million investment from Hyundai and Kia. The company says the partnership bumps Arrival’s valuation to more than $3 billion dollars.
