Soon they'll offer the hardware for free with a subscription and that will guarantee their dominance. Late capitalism in the imperial core will be really wacky with all the financialization, monopolization and the desperate urge to continue the generation of profit despite the conditions for that fading away (higher labor costs and less labor involved in production). Artificial scarcity is already the order of the day for most consumer goods, planned obsolescence too. The "everything-is-a-subscription-and-consumers-own-nothing" is all these ideas taken to the extreme. With guaranteed revenue, you don't have to worry about trying to get the average consumer to buy more of your stuff with advertising, making their stuff break after a planned amount of time, or only offering them stuff in low quantities to keep the price high, etc - you have them for as long as they have a computer, or a TV, or a car, a house, clothes, food, etc.
Soon they'll offer the hardware for free with a subscription and that will guarantee their dominance. Late capitalism in the imperial core will be really wacky with all the financialization, monopolization and the desperate urge to continue the generation of profit despite the conditions for that fading away (higher labor costs and less labor involved in production). Artificial scarcity is already the order of the day for most consumer goods, planned obsolescence too. The "everything-is-a-subscription-and-consumers-own-nothing" is all these ideas taken to the extreme. With guaranteed revenue, you don't have to worry about trying to get the average consumer to buy more of your stuff with advertising, making their stuff break after a planned amount of time, or only offering them stuff in low quantities to keep the price high, etc - you have them for as long as they have a computer, or a TV, or a car, a house, clothes, food, etc.