Apple Finds Its Next Big Business: Showing Ads on Your iPhone

Apple needs to be very careful that they don’t erode the things that most differentiate them from their competition.

Agree. But I believe Apple thinks they also need to move harder into "services" and, I suppose, now ads. I think Apple recognizes that the high-margin hardware business is not not sustainable. Especially as everyone who would want an iPhone already owns one. Apple needs to grow somewhere.

Everyone that owns an iPhone cycles them out every 2-3 years. It’s a perpetual cash cow.

That’s not true. A lot of people wait until their phone no longer works to upgrade.

And also, something being a cash cow at the moment does not mean that thing will continue to be one. Since the iPhone 6ish, iPhones have become “good enough”; there’s not much to differentiate each model from the previous as there was with, say, the iPhones 3GS and 4. The iPhone 13 just doesn’t have much going for it compared to the 12.