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Apple Debuts Invites App, Care+ Changes in Subscription Push

Angelo Zino, senior equity analyst at CFRA Research, reacts to Apple's Q1 earnings report as sales topped estimates despite weak performance in China.

(Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc. rolled out a new app for creating event invitations and made changes to its AppleCare+ customer support for iPhones, part of a broader push to generate more subscription revenue. 

The event app, called Apple Invites, allows users to organize occasions like birthday parties. The software can also tap into the Apple Intelligence AI platform to customize invitations, create playlists in the company’s music-streaming service and generate shared photo albums from the event. The app is free to download but requires an iCloud+ subscription, which starts at $0.99 per month.

The move could be disruptive to some popular mobile invitation tools, including Partiful, Paperless Post, Evite and Punchbowl.

Apple has prioritized its services and subscriptions business in recent years, seeking new ways to augment sales of its devices. The company now gets about $100 billion a year from services, which have become of its most reliable growth drivers.

In another subscription-related move, the tech giant is changing how it sells AppleCare+ for iPhones, its protection program for the device. Now, users won’t be able to pay upfront for an AppleCare+ plan at retail stores or via the AppleCare menu on the iPhone itself. Instead, they’ll need to pay monthly or annually. Apple is also prioritizing the pricier Theft & Loss plans.

“Customers using an iPhone in the United States can only purchase AppleCare+ with Theft and Loss using the monthly or annual payment option,” Apple told customer service staff. “If the customer asks, AppleCare+ with recurring payments is no longer available for iPhone.”

A monthly AppleCare+ plan for an iPhone 16 Pro costs $13.99 per month, while the previously available two-year, upfront plan was $269. AppleCare agents have been instructed to tell customers that the change is designed to lower upfront costs and prevent future gaps in coverage. 

The Theft and Loss plans allow customers to replace a lost device by paying a deductible. 

Bloomberg News reported earlier on both changes.

(Updates with additional AppleCare+ details in sixth paragraph.)

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