With budgets becoming tighter and consumers across the country making sure they get the most out of their available funds, Apple sounds like it could be making Final Cut Pro a subscription service.
At this time, Final Cut Pro costs $300 through the Mac App Store.
However, Patently Apple has discovered a new trademark Apple has filed that is categorized as “software rental.”
“Apple’s Final Cut Pro’ was granted ‘Registered Trademark’ (RTM) status back in May 2016. Apple’s RTM was filed only under International Class 009 covering the following:
“Computer software for creating, editing, processing, organizing, importing, exporting, and encoding video, movies, motion picture films, and multimedia content; computer software for creating, editing, processing, organizing, importing, exporting, and encoding audio, music, and sound content; computer software for creating and editing digital animation, graphics, and special effects; computer software for color correction of video and multimedia content; computer software for creating, processing, exporting, and encoding digital media.”
The term Software rental was not part of their registered trademark back in 2016.
On Monday Apple filed an update to their trademark ‘Final Cut Pro’ in Europe adding Nice Classification #42 that hints that Apple could decide to go the way of Microsoft’s subscription model for Final Cut Pro by adding in that class verbiage covering “rental of software.”
Other subscription services Apple currently has are Apple Music, Apple Fitness+ and Apple News+.
While the filing of this patent does not directly say that this is going to be something Apple does in the future, it at least gives us an idea of where they are thinking, in terms of the future of the company.
Additionally, 9to5Mac has highlighted some potential ideas as for what Apple has planned for what could be a Final Cut Pro subscription:
“First, Apple could retain the one-off purchase option, but charge a subscription fee for major updates.
Second, the company could offer new users the choice of a one-off purchase or monthly subscription to use the app.
Third, Apple could remove the option of a one-off purchase and turn Final Cut Pro into a subscription service. This possibility would dismay many who dislike the software as a service (SAAS) trend, preferring occasional app purchase costs to recurring monthly fees.
Finally, another option is that Apple might be keeping things as is, and only charging a subscription for those who want to use some kind of cloud-based version of Final Cut. That might mean access to an iPad version of the app as well as the Mac app, in addition to cloud storage.”
What do you think of the potential of a Final Cut Pro subscription service? Let us know on Twitter at @appleosophy.
