Apple Invites

I think some demographic info can be useful in judging the potential uptake.

Apple iPhone ownership amongst USA teens:

2024: 87%

2019: 83%

2014: 67%

https://www.iclarified.com/95177/87-of-us-teens-own-iphones-...

https://www.pipersandler.com/news/piper-jaffray-completes-se...

https://www.pipersandler.com/news/different-new-cool-accordi...

Smartphone marketshare for iPhone in various countries:

65%: Norway

59%: Sweden/Japan/Canada/USA

49%: UK

30-39%: Germany/Portugal/Italy

other countries are lower from my random sampling of developed countries (South Korea is dominated by Samsung).

Source: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/norway

Change last part of url to get info for another country

> Creation of invitations requires an iCloud+ subscription.

I really wonder what the uptake is on iCloud+ subscriptions.

Pretty high I suspect, since you need it if you want to back up more that 5 GB.

If you keep photos and videos without dealing with a separate service, it's pretty much a no-brainer. And the cheapest tier is $0.99/mo. for 50 GB so it's not exactly breaking the bank.

> And the cheapest tier is $0.99/mo. for 50 GB so it's not exactly breaking the bank.

This is a huge trick. Like any other service where the most friction is setting up billing... then they can increase the price easily. Do upgrades to other tiers require confirmation?

You have to explicitly upgrade.

There's no trick as far as I can tell.

And they haven't increased the price of the $0.99 tier ever, and it's been around for 8 years I think. I don't think they've ever increased the price of any storage plan in the US ever -- prices in other countries have changed but that seems to do more with currency fluctuations.

Apple is known for their transparent pricing and easy cancellation. I don't think there are any tricks here.

> There's no trick as far as I can tell.

I think that is the trick.

99 cents is so innocuous, that people set up billing to allow it. People who set up their apple id without a credit card will probably attach a card to their account to get the 99 cent storage "deal".

At that point, upgrading to the next tier is inevitable as phones have been steadily increasing in storage capacity.

I think it would be nicer if your icloud storage capacity matched your primary device.

I think that nearly everyone who has an iPhone (at least who didn't get their phone deeply discounted second-hand) has a payment method set up with Apple. I don't remember the numbers from when I had to know ~5 years ago, but it was in excess of 95% in the US.