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Logitech has ‘no plans’ for a subscription mouse
(www.theverge.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I highly recommend the Decoder podcast from The Verge. The host Nilay Patel interviews the Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber and this comes up. He comes at the question earnestly but can't understand how she tries to justify this. It's a pretty fun listen. Link: https://www.theverge.com/24206847/logitech-ceo-hanneke-faber-mouse-keyboard-gaming-decoder-podcast-interview
The transcript is there too if you just want to read it. Here's some of the relavent bits.
What made the mouse a forever mouse?
But, again, I just come back to the cost. You sell me the mouse once. Maybe I’ll pay 200 bucks for it.
Let’s come to that in a second because that makes sense to me. You sell managed services to enterprises. You price support contracts for cameras and whatever. That’s an ongoing need businesses have. I’m still stuck on, “You’re going to sell me a mouse once and it’s going to have ongoing software updates forever.”
But Rolex has to employ software engineers to ship me over-the-air updates forever.
....
I’m going to ask this very directly. Can you envision a subscription mouse?
And that would be the forever mouse?
So you pay a subscription for software updates to your mouse.
But it’s a mouse.
I think consumers might perceive those to be very different.
"Yeah, and you never have to worry about it again", in regards to paying for updates. Just set it to auto pay and never worry about it again 🤑
So thousands of dollars up front, then it doesn't work if you don't pay a $100/month subscription? Sounds awesome.