Andy Finnell’s post about pricing of iPhone apps available now in the iTunes Store brings up quite a few issues not just about pricing, but also on known shortcomings of the iTunes Store that Apple should look into.
The problem that you’re likely to have, like most developers, is setting a price that you can live on. The temptation will be to price your app too low, such that developing the application isn’t sustainable. You might have the best of intentions, but in the end you’ll cause the premature death of your business before it even gets a chance. So why might you be tempted to price your iPhone application so low?
To be honest, as consumers, we will definitely prefer to see the continuity of the current pricing situations, aka more $0.99 apps. But as pointed out in Andy’s article, we’ll end up with many apps that stayed at version 1.0 with not much improvements or with developers dropping out of the market with the unsustainable pricing situation now.
Also with regards to the iTunes Store, with only two ways to sort through the apps in their respective categories, it will be difficult for developers to help push their apps to the top of the pile unless they price it attractively (either $0.99 or FREE) or they get the boost from advertising and marketing, which most of them won’t.
So which do you prefer? Should developers price their apps based on their value or keep as it is now and risk going into oblivion?
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Pricing is a real mystery here. At 10-20 apps a day for paid apps it is hard to see how a developer can make money. Check out my bolg post on this at http://blog.cosential.com
Of course we all want “free,” but ultimately that’s not sustainable without some other income stream. Personally I don’t want my iPhone apps to have adverts (the screen is too small to waste that much space) yet, as a developer, at the very least I want to cover the costs of the iPhone Developer Program. In the longer term I think “sensible” pricing is the only sustainable way forward.
As I’ve said elsewhere, if Apple would allow trial versions I think it would allow reputable developers to raise costs. Right now you don’t want to pay a lot for an application that may or may not work for you. If you have, say, fifteen days to check it out I suspect you’d be willing to pay more since the risk is lower.
What about doing those “lite” version where not features are available? Which one will require more work – a trial or a crippled version?