| Until consumers are willing to spend on subscription services... You cannot shift a Gresham's Law race-to-the-bottom dynamic by insisting on consumer (or producer) willpower. You've got to enforce a floor. In other consumer (and industrial) products, this has tended to happen through the combined mechanisms of strict liability, certification, and independent inspection (in specific cases). Where manufacturers, or as seems more likely given the industry concentration around sales points, retailers, are liable for the consequences of unfit-for-purpose devices and services, a reasonable set of minimum requirements (including life-of-product and update requirements) can be specified, then you might see a shift to some mix of time-of-sale plus subscription service pricing and payment models. More likely you'll see devices bundled with services (which sometimes happens), though preferably in a far more user-friendly basis than is presently the case (e.g., cable service set-top boxes). There's actually a long history of leased-equipment business in the IT sector, most notably as pioneered by IBM in the 1950s and 1960s. |
Edit: Rather they should actually provide the spec, drivers etc