Tag: subscriber
Earnings Outlook: AT&T earnings to show if the wireless subscriber party has kept roaring
Kai Cenat crushes Ludwig’s subscriber record to become the new King of Twitch
Twitch streamer Kai Cenat breaks subscriber record
Disney+ reports its first subscriber loss of 2.4M subscribers, plans to lay off 7K employees
Disney’s first quarter with CEO Bob Iger back in command isn’t looking so good. Disney announced its Q1 2023 earnings today, reporting a total of 161.8 million Disney+ global subscribers, a decrease of 2.4 million subs from 164.2 million in the previous quarter. This is the streamer’s first subscriber loss since launching in 2019. The drop […]
Disney+ reports its first subscriber loss of 2.4M subscribers, plans to lay off 7K employees by Lauren Forristal originally published on TechCrunch
‘My Printer Is Extorting Me’, Complains Subscriber to HP’s ‘Instant Ink’ Program
I discovered an error message on my computer indicating that my HP OfficeJet Pro had been remotely disabled by the company. When I logged on to HP’s website, I learned why: The credit card I had used to sign up for HP’s Instant Ink cartridge-refill program had expired, and the company had effectively bricked my device in response….
Instant Ink is a monthly subscription program that purports to monitor one’s printer usage and ink levels and automatically send new cartridges when they run low. The name is misleading, because the monthly fee is not for the ink itself but for the number of pages printed. (The recommended household plan is $5.99 a month for 100 pages). Like others, I signed up in haste during the printer-setup process, only slightly aware of what I was purchasing. Getting ink delivered when I need it sounded convenient enough to me….
The monthly fee is incurred whether you print or not, and the ink cartridges occupy some liminal ownership space. You possess them, but you are, in essence, renting both them and your machine while you’re enrolled in the program…. Here was a piece of technology that I had paid more than $200 for, stocked with full ink cartridges. My printer, gently used, was sitting on my desk in perfect working order but rendered useless by Hewlett-Packard, a tech corporation with a $28 billion market cap at the time of writing, because I had failed to make a monthly payment for a service intended to deliver new printer cartridges that I did not yet need….
There are tales of woe across HP’s customer-support site, in Reddit threads, and on Twitter. A pending class-action lawsuit in California alleges that the Instant Ink program has “significant catches” and does not deliver new cartridges on time or allow those enrolled to use cartridges purchased outside the subscription service, rendering the consumer frequently unable to print. Parker Truax, a spokesperson for HP, told me, “Instant Ink cartridges will continue working until the end of the current billing cycle in which [a customer cancels]. To continue printing after they discontinue their Instant Ink subscription and their billing cycle ends, they can purchase and use HP original Standard or XL cartridges.”
“Nobody told me that if I canceled, then all those cartridges would stop working,” complains another owner of an HP printer cited in the article. “I guess this is our future, where your printer ink spies on you.”
But the article ultimately concludes that the printer’s shakedown is “just one example of how digital subscriptions have permeated physical tech so thoroughly that they are blurring the lines of ownership. Even if I paid for it, can I really say that I own my printer if HP can flip a switch and make it inert?”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Today is a great day to be a Game Pass subscriber
November is a rather miserable month, if you ask me. For a start, it’s chucking it down right now, and my flat is freezing. There are no longer any Halloween vibes lingering around, and it’s a tad too far from Christmas to feel festive yet. That said, Xbox Game Pass is certainly coming in clutch this month and keeping plenty of us busy.
Xbox Game Pass is typically throwing out stellar offerings left, right, and centre. We’re guaranteed at least one or two solid additions to the subscription each month, and November is no different, aside from the fact we get more than just two good games.
Last week, we saw Tom Orry burn his lunch as he let Vampire Survivors sink its claws into him, and I can imagine he’s very much not alone in that sentiment. Having arrived on Xbox Game Pass on November 10, don’t be fooled by the graphically unimpressive screenshots you may have seen.
Microsoft fails to hit Xbox Game Pass subscriber target for second year running
First reported by Axios, and according to a new financial filing, Microsoft has failed to reach its annual, internal growth target for the popular subscription service, Xbox Game Pass. It’s also said that this is the only metric tied to CEO Satya Nadella’s pay, which is interesting, to say the least.
This is the second year running in which Microsoft has fallen short of its target. The company initially planned for a 72.8% growth rate for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2022. However, Microsoft was only able to achieve a 28% growth rate instead.
Microsoft did exceed the planned growth rate in 2020, but 2021 and 2022 have been less than successful when it comes to hitting its target for the service. We’re also now well aware that “Xbox gaming generated an eye-watering total revenue of $16.28 billion for Microsoft” during the calendar year of 2021, with Xbox Game Pass being responsible for 18% of this.