Since every up-front price has an equivalent value to a certain ongoing permanent flow, this is nonsense. Now, it may be that the price/quality ratio the market supports with the will support with up-front pricing is too low for the downstream support expected while the subscription price that is supported is greater.
I’d argue that the majority of customers in the software market didn’t really evolve with the distribution model; phones arguably just expanded distribution to a great many people who previously weren’t software customers of any kind or rarely made software purchases at all (beyond that which came for “free” on their devices), many of whom appear to think paying for software in any fashion is almost unthinkable.
I still don't see how the fault lies with the customer. Look at all the software they get to use for free or cheap because the software shops made it available for free (with ads) or cheap ($.99 apps). This is not the customer's fault; they were trained to think this way.