Apple Extends MobileMe Subscriptions Again

Once again, Apple has extended subscriptions to its struggling MobileMe service, adding another 60 days to trial and paid subscriptions.

Apple’s MobileMe service aimed to be “Exchange for the rest of us,” and that’s proven to be far truer than the company hoped, as the service’s launch was plagued by lost mail and connectivity issues…you know, the same thing corporate and enterprise users and Microsoft’s Exchange service have been dealing with for years. The rocky launch already prompted Apple to add 30 days to subscriptions to the service, and now the company is adding another 60 days to trial and paid MobileMe subscriptions as an apology to customers.

And yes, the 60-day extension is in addition to the 30-day extension. Apple began launching MobileMe the same weekend the iPhone 3G went on sale, meaning the service has been online 40 days and already given away 90 days of free service.

“We’ve already made many improvements to MobileMe,” the company posted on its MobileMe News page, “but we still have many more to make, and we appreciate our subscribers’ patience while we turn things around. We are working very hard to make MobileMe a great service we can all be proud of.”

In a memo to employees earlier this month, Apple CEO Steve Jobs admitted that MobileMe launched too soon. Jobs also reorganized the MobileMe group to report to Eddy Cue, who also heads up iTunes, which has a surprisingly good track record for availability and scaling to service mammoth numbers of customers and unique data items.