In an interview with London’s Evening Standard, Apple SVP Eddy Cue said that Apple is relaxed about how many Apple Music subscribers are immediately willing to pay for the service once their free trial ends.
Though published today, the interview took place before the trial ended for early adopters, so doesn’t give any hint as to conversion rates …
Ultimately, you never know until it happens. But we’re pleased with the number of people who have tried. Everybody gets fixated on the short term but we’re in this for the long haul.
In what seems likely to be a carefully scripted aside, Cue also said that Apple is working on tackling roaming charges, when people travel overseas with their iPhones.
It had previously been suggested that Apple might want to become a virtual carrier, offering its own service plans using infrastructure belonging to existing carriers, a claim Apple quickly denied.
He taps his phone and makes an offhand comment about “trying not to get roaming charges” while in London which, I note, proves how insanely expensive phone calls and data can be abroad. “It’s sad, it’s another problem,” says Cue. “We’re trying to fix it and we’re making a little bit of progress but you’ve got to convince a lot of people.”
The company has, however, been making some moves in that general direction, starting with its own SIM card, working with carriers to develop a standard for universal SIMs and launching an iPhone Upgrade Plan that allows customers to get a new phone each year directly from Apple rather than via carriers.
Cue also echoed an old Steve Jobs line that customers don’t know what they want until they see it.
One of the dangers is to only do things people tell you to do. You would never do Live Photos or 3D Touch if you only listened to people. To innovate you have to look beyond. We used to say that we get paid to look around corners.
