Take home printers for instance. Used to be you bought a printer and then purchased toner/ink as you needed it. Now for say $15/mo you get toner/ink cartridge sent to you automatically as your printer calls for it.
For some heavy users, the company may have to send you a cartridge every month or so and take a loss. But for the majority of others, a cartridge might be needed only once every year or so, allowing for hefty margins.
Overall, "printing-as-a-service" is very lucrative.
Many other examples abound such as Microsoft Office 365.
This is a mixed bag. Do I want to pay an extra $1000 for a feature I don’t want? If I’m driving the car for only 2 years $10/mn is cheaper. If I’m laid off and conserving cash I can turn off extra stuff and then reable after getting hired again. Way too many scenarios to know whether this is good/bad without knowong specific use and implementation cases.
Microsoft is coming out with Office 2021 which is a one time purchase as I bet they found people do not want to pay yet another monthly charge as they would do with Office 365.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/what-s-the-difference-between-microsoft-365-and-office-2021-ed447ebf-6060-46f9-9e90-a239bd27eb96
They also have Office for the web which is free.
The price of cars are way to high now. There must be a car company that would have a base model where you could plug in a module if you wanted other features but for what?
A car is for driving to where you want to go. You do not need any other features but an engine and 4 tires.
I do not see paying for radio or seat warmer or gps map when you already have a cell phone with a bluetooth connection and can buy seat warmer or a/c seat cushions.