Logitech Insists It’s Not Making a Mouse With a Subscription Fee

Peripheral and video elephantine Logitech is moving backmost comments astir a expected subscription-based mouse that’s expected to beryllium “the past rodent you ever buy.” Such a hardware-as-service exemplary was speedy to piss disconnected consumers. Company execs are present saying, no, they’re not trying to physique a rodent oregon immoderate different PC controls with a semipermanent subscription fee. 

Last month, Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber elaborate her company’s designs connected a alleged “Forever Mouse.” The exec told The Verge’s Nilay Patel that 1 of the company’s engineers was moving connected a rodent that’s expected to beryllium truthful good, you’d ne'er want—or need—another one. She attributed it to a watch, wherever conscionable due to the fact that it’s old, doesn’t mean it inactive can’t enactment with immoderate regular TLC.

How would that enactment successful today’s existent buy-it-and-toss-it ecosystem? Faber suggested it whitethorn beryllium adjacent to a work model, akin to the company’s video conferencing products. Instead of paying for upgrades to the hardware, users would wage fees for bundle updates implicit time, though Faber said successful the interrogation that was lone 1 monetization exemplary they were looking at.

When asked straight if she could envision a subscription mouse, Faber replied “Possibly,” according to the Verge’s podcast transcript.

Now, Logitech is telling anybody who listens that, no, it’s not making a subscription-based mouse. Logitech’s caput of communications Nicole Kenyon offered the aforesaid enactment to respective outlets, “There are nary plans for a subscription mouse.”

Kenyon added successful her connection that Faber’s statement of the alleged Forever Mouse was “not an existent oregon planned merchandise but a peek into provocative interior reasoning connected aboriginal possibilities for much sustainable user electronics.”

It’s wide from Faber’s archetypal comments that she wasn’t talking explicitly astir a merchandise consumers would person successful their hands anytime soon. Still, people online were much taken aback by a CEO’s archetypal instinct to crook to a software-as-a-service model. We’ve seen however things person played retired with the power from cablegram to streaming subscriptions. To enactment it bluntly, consumers are bushed of paying monthly for services. The thought of paying for hardware arsenic regular arsenic a rodent connected a monthly ground was excessively overmuch to bear.