Apple has a policy or an offer, available for the last year only in America, and now moving to the UK and China which I would really to see them bring to South Africa.  In terms of the offer, for a nominal extra monthly amount, you get the right, every single year, to exchange your iPhone for the latest iPhone!  That guarantees that you will always have the latest phone and it will not cost you much extra.  

The first thing that I think about, when thinking about a company offering such a product, is why would they do that?  To me it is obviously a signal that we are getting to the end of the dramatic, “have to have” improvements each year and the company wants to tie people in and keep them away from their competitors.  It is a great value feature, but I just don’t see it being replicated in South Africa yet, particularly considering it has taken them one year to expand it from one country to now just three countries.  I suppose, amongst other things, you need to be able to considerably ramp up your production before you do that, because once enough clients have taken advantage of that sort of monthly deal and tied themselves into your company on the long term, it guarantees that you will need to produce millions more for the first few weeks of the launch because a lot of your clients become automatically entitled to the latest version.  

I don’t know the finer details such as whether you become entitled on the first day or how long you would have to wait, because I am sure most companies will try and give preference to new, cash paying clients, however unfair that is to the people who have taken the deal and I can only imagine the howls of protest if in 2 or 3 years’ time they suddenly start releasing a new iPhone every 18 months and then after that every 24 months, etc which would make such a programme more affordable for Apple, but it is certainly one to watch with interest and see whether or not this policy comes to South Africa.  The extra amount in America that you pay, to have the free upgrade every year, is fairly nominal at about R70,00 a month and one struggles to do the maths as to how then it becomes viable for Apple to do this unless the phone that you are handing in still has a high resale value – which seems to be the case with most second-hand Apple products.  The bottom line is it has been for a number of years, and still is, a premier product that every other company has tried to imitate, invariably at lower prices.