I am surprised they shut down this initiative. I would assume it would offer more revenue and more predictability. It definitely wouldn't work everywhere (lower income countries have longer refresh cycles and people tend to avoid subscriptions), but I could see this working in US market.
Seems the main drivers for shutting down this program were carrier relationships (a critical piece in the US from my understanding) and regulatory concerns. I am assuming regulatory concerns would not be relevant anymore with the new US administration, so perhaps Apple thought it was too risky to disrupt carrier relationships.