When Apple announced the Emergency SOS service, it made it clear that it would be free for the first two years. However, the Cupertino company, earlier this month, for owners of iPhone 14 has extended this “promotion” for a further year. Therefore, the service will be free until September 2025 (obviously also for iPhone 15 owners). In short, it would seem that the Cupertino company wants to keep the service free, however it will have to carefully evaluate the costs of this operation.
About, John Gruber, in one of his articles, wrote that it would not be easy to understand how much it would cost to make the service free forever. So, for Apple it would be simpler to extend the free “Emergency SOS” program from year to year and evaluate its progress. In another article, however, Gruber again took into consideration the hypothesis that Apple would propose the paid service. Well, in this case a situation could arise where someone could risk their life because they forgot to renew their subscription to the function.
In fact, it wouldn’t be nice at all to read that a family of hikers lost their lives because it was impossible to use Apple’s “Emergency SOS” function. In short, the importance of this option is evident and the need, therefore, for the Cupertino company to identify a solution that allows it to remain free. A possible way forward to achieve this objective could be to keep the basic service free and provide paid subscriptions for more premium services.
