pricing

The Microsoft brand logo on display October 2016 on Sixth Avenue in New York City. On Monday, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission sued the software giant for allegedly misleading more than 2.5 million Australian users over subscriptions to Microsoft 365. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

Oct. 27 (UPI) — Australia’s consumer authority accused Microsoft of “deliberately” hiding subscription information from its Australian customer base.

On Monday, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission sued the software giant for allegedly misleading more than 2.5 million Australian users over subscriptions to Microsoft 365.

“Following a detailed investigation, the ACCC alleges that Microsoft deliberately hid this third option, to retain the old plan at the old price, in order to increase the uptake of Copilot and the increased revenue from the Copilot integrated plans,” stated ACCC Chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb.

Australia’s CCC launched its Microsoft inquiry after reports that Microsoft allegedly misled its customers about price increases and options over subscriptions following the integration of its “Copilot” AI tool.

It alleged that Microsoft told users a higher price must be paid to keep subscriptions, which was to include Microsoft’s Copilot, or be forced to cancel.

According to Cass-Gottlieb, the ACCC will seek a penalty to demonstrate that non-compliance with Australia’s consumer laws was “not just a cost of doing business.”

Microsoft said it was reviewing the Australian government’s claim, adding that consumer trust and transparency were “top priorities.”

Last year in December, British digital rights advocacy groups launched a billion-dollar lawsuit against Microsoft, alleging it overcharged clients of its Windows Server software used in cloud computing.

The United States, Canada and Australia partnered over the summer in a global probe to identify hackers who attacked a security flaw in Microsoft software to internationally infiltrate agencies and businesses.

In May, U.S.-based Microsoft revealed it was axing roughly 6,000 jobs in its global workforce.

“We remain committed to working constructively with the regulator and ensuring our practices meet all legal and ethical standards,” a Microsoft spokesperson told ABC News in Australia on Monday.

Apple (AAPL -3.17%) shares dipped slightly on Tuesday as the tech giant unveiled its latest iPhones. The company behind the world’s most popular premium smartphone now has fresh hardware headed to stores later this month. Investors will be watching early demand closely, but one detail from the event deserves special attention: pricing. Apple raised the starting price of the iPhone 17 Pro to $1,099 in the U.S., $100 above last year’s Pro entry point.

Apple’s iPhone business has already regained momentum. In the quarter ending Jun. 28, Apple posted record fiscal third-quarter revenue, with double-digit growth in iPhone and an all-time high in services. Management also highlighted growth across every geographic segment and said the installed base of active devices hit a new high. Those are the right conditions heading into a price-supported product cycle.

Recent results point to a healthier iPhone backdrop

Apple‘s fiscal third quarter showed the core engine is running well again. Total revenue rose to $94.0 billion, up 10% year over year, while iPhone revenue climbed 13% to $44.6 billion from $39.3 billion a year ago. Services revenue reached $27.4 billion, also a record for the June quarter. All of this pushed earnings per share for the quarter up 12% year over year. This mix shows iPhone still doing the heavy lifting while services keeps compounding on a larger base.

Apple CEO Tim Cook captured the tone in the company’s fiscal third-quarter release in late July: “Today Apple is proud to report a June quarter revenue record with double-digit growth in iPhone, Mac and services and growth around the world, in every geographic segment.” That comment, paired with an all-time-high installed base noted by the CFO, underscores the company’s momentum as new models arrive later this month.

Apple stock’s valuation reflects high expectations. As of Tuesday’s close, the stock traded around the mid-30s on a trailing price-to-earnings basis and sported a market cap near $3.5 trillion. Premium valuation multiples require sustained growth, so whether the iPhone lineup can support another leg higher matters for returns from here.

A Pro price bump and a new Air could lift iPhone revenue

The most consequential change this fall may be simple: Apple lifted the iPhone 17 Pro’s starting price to $1,099 from $999 for last year’s 16 Pro. Even before any unit growth, that change can nudge average selling prices higher, especially if Pro models continue to draw enthusiasts who want the iPhone models with the best cameras and performance. Apple also doubled the entry storage on 17 Pro to 256GB, which supports the higher entry price while still benefiting revenue recognition.

Additionally, Apple introduced iPhone Air — the thinnest iPhone yet — with a polished titanium frame and new Ceramic Shield 2 front and back that Apple says is more scratch- and crack-resistant than prior models. Priced below the Pro line at $999, Air offers a sleeker and tougher design that should appeal to mainstream upgraders who have waited. Together with iPhone 17, this broadens the ladder for buyers and may support both units and richer configurations. Preorders begin Friday, with availability next week.

These product dynamics line up with the fundamentals Apple reported in late July: iPhone is growing again, services is setting records, and the installed base is larger than ever. A higher Pro entry price, a compelling non-Pro option in Air, and the usual mix of trade-in and carrier promotions could translate into higher iPhone revenue in fiscal 2026, potentially in the double digits, if Apple sustains healthy Pro demand and nudges more mainstream buyers to upgrade. The risks are clear, including price sensitivity at the high end, macro softness in key regions, and intense competition. But Apple’s scale, brand strength, and rapidly growing services business help cushion those pressures.

In short, Apple just made its most popular premium phones more valuable — and more expensive — while adding a new, tougher design at a slightly lower price point than Pro. If that combination drives strong Pro mix and steady upgrades, it can lift average selling prices and total iPhone revenue next year. With services already at record levels and the installed base expanding, that is a reasonable path for the stock to maintain a premium valuation over time, allowing the stock price to grow with earnings growth.

Daniel Sparks and his clients have positions in Apple. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Apple. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

“The Wizard of Oz” is certainly the right movie to face the great and powerful ambitions of Sphere, the most expensive entertainment venue in Las Vegas history. Since 1939, the treasured classic has hailed the awe of gazing into a glowing globe, whether it’s glinting atop a fortune teller’s table, transporting the meddlesome Glinda the Good Witch or spying on a teenage girl and her companions like a sinister security camera.

Special effects are central both to “Oz’s” appeal and its plot: The big reveal is that technicians, not wizards, pull the levers that make an audience gasp. For Sphere — officially, there’s no “the” — those tools include three football fields of bright 16K LED screens that curve around its domed interior, with another 10 on the outside that light up Vegas day and night with rotating animations. (I saw blue gingham, scarlet sequins and thatches of burlap and straw.) Sphere cost an estimated $2.3 billion to build and must have an electricity bill scarier than the Wicked Witch. You can make out Dorothy’s slippers from an airplane.

With no heel clicks needed, I was whisked to “The Wizard of Oz’s” Sphere premiere in a red sedan by a Lyft driver named — no fooling — Ruby, who said she was grateful that the Backstreet Boys’ recent stint at the arena “made Vegas busy for a minute.” There’s a lot of financial pressure on “Oz’s” girl from Kansas. Adapting the film to Sphere’s stunning dimensions took about $100 million. Although the arena seats 17,600 when full, “Oz” showings only offer a slice of the middle section, roughly a third of its capacity. A trimmed 70-minute edit of the movie is playing two to three times a day, nearly every day, through the end of March 2026, with a ticket price that currently starts at $114.

Eighty-six years ago, when a kiddie fare cost 15 cents, my then-6-year-old grandmother watched the theater blink from sepia to vivid color splendor. That innovation gets credited to Hollywood, but the idea of contrasting lush and luminous Oz against soul-drainingly monochrome Kansas is actually right there on Page 1 of L. Frank Baum’s book, published in May 1900, a self-proclaimed effort to write a “modernized” fairy tale that swaps Old World elves for American scarecrows. “When Dorothy stood in the doorway and looked around, she could see nothing but the great gray prairie on every side,” Baum wrote, adding that her house and her weary aunt and uncle and everything else were gray too, “to the edge of the sky in all directions.”

That’s exactly what Sphere was designed to do: stretch to the edge in all dimensions. It exists neither to save film nor supplant it, but to augment a rectangular screen with new digital and (controversially) generative-AI-supplied imagery, timed props and seats that vibrate whenever the Wicked Witch cackles.

Despite my queasiness about cutting “Oz” by half an hour, the experiment is a romp. I was immersed in — or, more accurately, surrounded by — scenes from one of my favorite movies, a pivotal blockbuster whose artistic influence extends from David Lynch to Elton John to Salman Rushdie. Even more giggle-inducing, I was pelted with scented foam apples and dive-bombed by half a dozen drone-piloted flying monkeys.

“The Wizard of Oz” has always braved new technology. An early adopter of Technicolor, it boasted a lighting budget nearly double that of its rival, “Gone With the Wind,” yet the latter gobbled nearly every Academy Award and poached “Oz’s” director, Victor Fleming, who swapped projects halfway through and won an Oscar for his vision of Sherman’s March instead of the Yellow Brick Road. In the 1950s, when the rest of Hollywood was terrified of television, “Oz” agreed to be the first theatrical movie to screen in full on a prime-time network. TV transformed the prestige money-loser into a hit. Sphere has turned “Oz” into a flash point in the industry’s fundamental fight over the use of AI. Artists and audiences alike fear a future in which, behind the curtain, there might not be a man at all.

I like my art made by human beings. But I’m no nostalgist. “Oz” was a book, a musical, a silent short and a cartoon before MGM made the variant we adore. It should be a playground for invention.

Entering Sphere, the escalators are tinted sepia and the soundscape hums with birdsong and lowing cattle. The implication is that we’ve not yet been whirled over the rainbow. Preshow, the view from one’s seat is of being in a massive old opera house with dusky green drapes flanked by rows of orchestra seats. None of the proscenium is actually there, nor are the musicians heard running scales and rehearsing “Follow the Yellow Brick Road.”

The simulation of human handicraft — of stagehands and horn players hiding in the wings — is unnerving. But it gets you thinking about the actual, contemporary people who are behind that curtain. Visual artists who labored on the Sphere project have justly grumbled that their sweat has gotten publicly dismissed as AI. An actual symphony orchestra rerecorded “Oz’s” mono score on the very same MGM stage used in 1939, allegedly with some of the same instruments. It sounds fantastic, and it’s so loyal to every jaunty warble that audiences might not notice.

A few scenes have been lopped off entirely. The Cowardly Lion no longer trills about becoming king of the forest. The majority of the shots have been micro-trimmed to be snappier, a pace that wouldn’t suit stoners’ penchant for synchronizing the movie to Pink Floyd’s dreamy, woozy “The Dark Side of the Moon.” Occasionally, the camera’s placement appears to have been adjusted to allow the visuals to expand to fill the space. Inside Dorothy’s Kansan house, a once-shadowed frying pan on the wall now dangles front and center, as does a digitally added “Home Sweet Home” needlepoint nailed to the threshold. (The plotting has become so brisk that we might otherwise miss the message that there’s no place like it.)

The tweaks can be subtle and lovely. Dorothy belts “Over the Rainbow” underneath newly actualized bluebirds and an impressively ominous sky. When the tornado happens, the tech changes hit us like a cyclone. We’re pulled through the window and into the eye of the storm, where a cow spirals around like it wants to outdo the scene-stealing bovine from “Twister.” A great, giddy blast of air from the 750-horsepower fans blew my bangs straight off my forehead. I kept one eye on the screen while trying to catch a flurry of tissue-paper leaves. The wow factor is so staggering that you might not spot that Sphere’s founder and chief executive, James Dolan, and Warner Bros. president and CEO David Zaslav have superimposed their faces on the two sailors twirling past in a rowboat — an apropos in-joke for people concerned the moguls have been swept away by their own bluster.

“Anyone can blow wind into your face,” Dolan said to the premiere audience before the film began. “Not everyone can make you feel like you’re in a tornado.” Wearing the Wizard’s green top hat and suit and with his microphone dropping out inauspiciously, Dolan never introduced himself, but he did compliment the other creators of the event, who also wore costumes. (I overheard that some of them thought Dolan was kidding about dressing in character until they found themselves spending four hours getting groomed to look lionesque.)

Just a week earlier, in trial runs, perfumes were piped into the air so people could get a whiff of the Emerald City. (Gauging by the souvenir candles in Sphere’s gift shop, it is chocolate mint.) They’ve currently been scaled back out of concerns that it all might get too overwhelming. Having figured out how to do sight, sound, feel and smell, Dolan conceded that only one sense remains: “We still haven’t figured out taste.”

Taste is definitely still a concern. Oddly, Sphere’s “Oz” loses a dram of its spellcraft once audiences touch down in Munchkinland. Seeing the newly added tops of Oz’s trees makes the fantastical place look smaller.

You feel for the design teams. They’ve been challenged to magnify a 4-foot matte painting of the arched hallway into the Wizard’s throne room — initially done in pastels on black cardboard — into a 240-foot-tall tableau. One of the 1939 film’s production designers, Jack Martin Smith, said that his instructions were to make Oz “ethereal” and “subdued.” Descriptions of the cornfield’s hand-painted muslin background make it sound like a proto-Rothko. Now, you can see every kernel. The razor-sharp mountains on the horizon don’t inspire your imagination — they make you think of Machu Picchu.

More troublesome are the Munchkins and the citizens of Emerald City. Tidied into high definition, they often appear restless. As Dorothy pleads for the Wizard not to fly away without her, we’re distracted by hundreds of waving extras who visibly don’t give a hoot what happens to the girl. Worse, they occasionally seem to glitch. If that’s the best AI can do in 2025, then Sphere isn’t a resounding endorsement.

By contrast, Judy Garland’s performance, delivered at just age 16, feels monumental. Her big brown eyes dominate the screen. When the heartbroken girl sobs that the Wicked Witch has chased away her beloved Toto, I found myself annoyed by a flying monkey on the left side of the frame who simply looked bored.

The field of poppies is dazzling; the additional deer, ants and rodents skittering across the golden sidewalk are simply strange. Overall, you’re so caught up observing the experience itself that the emotions of the story don’t register as anything more than theme-ride hydraulics. Still, it’s nice to have a sweeping view of the first film’s prosthetic makeup: the Cowardly Lion’s upturned nostrils, the Scarecrow’s baggy jowls, the real horses painted purple and red with Jell-O. (Due to pace tightening, we only see two ponies, not all six).

I recoiled when the Wizard’s disembodied head loomed above. Who decided to make him look like a cheesy martian? Flipping through sketches from 1939 afterward, I realized that he always looked that bad. His gaunt cheekbones just weren’t as obvious before. Nevertheless, be sure to look to the right when Toto reveals Oz’s control booth. In a clever touch, Sphere lets us continue to see the monstrous green face, now neutered and ridiculous, mouth along as the panicked geek apologizes for being a humbug.

Can Sphere win big on its risky gamble that there’s no place like dome? It’s not the first Las Vegas attraction to bet on our love for the MGM extravaganza. “The Wizard of Oz” has been tangled up with Las Vegas’ fortunes for more than half a century, ever since real estate investor Kirk Kerkorian purchased MGM Studios in 1969 and, one year later, auctioned Dorothy’s slippers to help fund the construction of the first MGM Grand Hotel and Casino. The second MGM Grand, the one that opened in 1993, was branded for “The Wizard of Oz” — that’s why it’s green like Emerald City — and during the first year, visitors could walk through an animatronic forest of lions, tigers and gamblers.

The Strip was once a magical place where innocents like Dorothy flocked to get into trouble, often in encounters with sleight-of-hand hucksters like Professor Marvel. Hopes are high that tourists will come back to be transported to Oz, even at a ticket price that costs a chunk of the family farm. The hurdle is that although audiences have become begrudgingly accustomed to spending more than $100 to see their favorite bands, they’re still seeing an actual band and not a shortened version of a movie that’s popular in part because everyone grew up watching it on TV for free.

But on opening night at least, the crowd was treating the cinema like a concert. Many folks were in some sort of costume, including me. (I couldn’t resist wearing a pair of red shoes.) When I complimented a man’s blue gingham suit, he handed me a handmade beaded, Taylor Swift-style bracelet that read: Toto Too.

If fans like him turn this techno-incarnation of “Oz” into a hit, Sphere has said it would consider following it up with a similar presentation of “Gone With the Wind.” Imagine the smell of the burning of Atlanta. Much better than the air of burning money.