In the past few years, there has been a move for software to move to a subscription service. It's been around, in effect, for a long time. Originally software was free, and you would lease the machines. Then you could buy machines, but you had to pay for software support.
Then when the PC came out, you could "buy" software, but as the software evolved, you had to buy the next version to get the new features.
All of these ways of selling computers acknowledged that you need a constant stream of money to keep software working and improve it.
Several years ago Microsoft moved all of their development tools to a subscription basis... $10K for initial buy-in then $2500 a year after that. It worked are really well for Microsoft and for developers because you no longer had to figure out what tools to buy, you had access to them all. Now they are moving their end-user software to a subscription basis.
Adobe to moved to a 100% subscription basis a few years ago. A lot of talking heads said, and even customers said it would be the end of Adobe; who would rent software they used to buy? It turned out quite well for Adobe.
You can't "buy" soft or firmware. It continually needs fixes and upgrades. It takes a constants stream of money to do that. You either have to figure out some way to get people to buy upgrades and live with the nightmare of lots of different versions in the field or do a subscription service. So far the subscription service works out best not only for the company but for the users too. It lets the company focus constant software fixes and improvement rather than trying figure features that will convince people to buy a new release.
Right now, the main problem that I think BMW has is that they haven't quite figured out the over-the-air software update thing. Once they do, I think most of the issues we have seen start to go away.... or all the late model BMW's will turn into bricks all at once on the same day
