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.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know.
TRM Labs, the year-old crypto risk management startup, is planning to use its newly raised $4.2 million to grow its engineering and data science teams locally, expand into new markets, and accelerate product development, Esteban Castaño, co-founder and CEO of TRM Labs, told Cheddar Thursday.
Charles Schwab is reportedly planning a $26 billion purchase of TD Ameritrade in an unsurprising response to the industry's tectonic shift to zero-commission trading fees.
Volkswagen gets its first chance to show off its new electric vehicle, the ID. Space Vizzion, even as the California government boycotts the show over some automakers siding with the White House in a fight over emissions standards.
For PayPal, whose customers comprise both consumers and merchants, this deal for Honey, the browser extension that scours the internet for coupons, helps the company move up the funnel to discovery.
Part of the updates includes testing “publisher white lists,” which will allow brands to select which accounts that their ads are approved to run on. It also includes centralized ways to create publisher blocklists, set ad inventory filters, and get reports.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Wednesday, November 20, 2019.
Blockchain analytics startup Elliptic has added XRP, the native currency of the Ripple payment network, to its risk management suite and identified $400 million in XRP transactions linked to illicit activity, including scams, theft and money laundering.
The Growing Renewable Energy and Efficiency Now (or GREEN) Act would add five years to the so-called investment tax credit (ITC) that provides an upfront subsidy to solar and offshore wind projects.
