I very much doubt that. I just checked the apple store page for an iphone 17. They try to sell me the larger storage model, they try to sell me apple care, but I don't see anything related to icloud. If I look at the pro, they try to sell me the max.

The difference between a 512 GB and a 256 GB non-pro model is 250 Euros. The 200 GB icloud subscription (which, again, they don't talk about when buying an iphone) costs 2.99 Euros a month. Break even is in seven years. I bet many phones don't actually last that long. If you look at a 2TB plan (which doesn't have an equivalent phone) the break-even is 2 years.

It makes no sense to try to sell the cheaper iPhone in the hope that I'll buy some icloud storage, since they actually leave money on the table. Looking at pro models, the difference between the base 256 + 2TB icloud and 2 TB model has an even longer break-even period!

So, basically, it looks actually cheaper to get a smaller phone + icloud than a bigger one.

Apple is a consumer services company, it contributes the half of their profits, and storage is their most popular service.

https://www.ft.com/content/3687fab7-3aea-4f81-9616-ed3d1f7be...

> Services are on track to make up a quarter of Apple’s revenue but as much as 50 per cent of its profit, said JPMorgan analyst Samik Chatterjee, reflecting the “stickiness” of products such as recurring payments for iCloud storage.

Your rational take makes sense but the market disagrees. Apple cloud storage is very, very poplar.

I think we're talking past each other. I never argued icloud wasn't popular or people didn't buy it. I disagree with the reason why it's popular and with the fact that apple would push cheaper devices in the hopes of enticing people to buy icloud.

I posit many people use it for syncing / sharing stuff and easy "backup", and not mainly as a way to increase storage for entry-level devices.