TUAW Poll: Do you use in-app purchasing?

One of my favorite apps is Night Stand [iTunes Link]. This app contains a variety of different themes (clock displays) and has an alarm, pretty basic but I use it every day. Last night when I ran it, I found that there was a new clock theme named Glow for in-app purchase. It looked interesting but there was no way to find out the cost without hitting the 'buy' button which I did. Luckily, before it was purchased, a confirmation screen came up with the price of US0.99. This was a bit surprising since US0.99 was the full price of the app which already came with six themes.

This got me thinking about whether in-app purchasing will work or not, or if there is any rhyme or reason to pricing? I wouldn't buy one-sixth of the value of an app for full price and I wonder who would? Last week we ran a story on how in-app buying is not working out so well for Pangea. I wonder if it's working out for anyone?

My feeling is that iPhone apps are looked upon differently than full Macintosh applications. They are cheaper and tend to do one thing only. Night Stand is a clock, it doesn't purport to be more than be a clock. So what should a new clock theme be worth?

I've started viewing apps as casual purchases and at the price I don't expect more than one thing, which if done well, is worth the buck. So I'm not seeing the value of highly priced in-app sales. I can see the reason for some expensive apps charging for major functionality increases, such as Navigon when they added a $US20 live traffic option to their $US90 Mobile Navigation app, but that seems to be the exception and not the rule.

I would guess that extra gaming levels would be an expected revenue source, but I just don't see the majority of people spending enough time with a game app to run out of levels and buy more.

Take the poll below and then comment on your feelings on in-app purchasing. Will this turn out to be something big, or is it just another solution looking for a problem?

Would you use in-app purchasing to buy extra features for an iPhone/iPod touch application?
Sure! I've done it already.	395 (8.5%)
Probably, if something good comes along.	1222 (26.4%)
I really haven't thought about it	664 (14.4%)
Probably not, the app is enough.	1306 (28.2%)
No way. I haven't competely gone through all the apps I've downloaded as it is.	1039 (22.5%)

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Source: http://www.tuaw.com/2009/09/28/do-you-use-in-app-purchasing/

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Analysis / Opinion App Store

One of my favorite apps is Night Stand [iTunes Link]. This app contains a variety of different themes (clock displays) and has an alarm,...

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Rohit Singal

I am Rohit from SpoonJuice, will just like to say, in app purchase model for Night Stand did not work. Almost everyone is complaining, so as usual we listen to our users and will be making the Glow theme free in next update ...

September 29 2009 at 2:52 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Any news about in-app purchases for The Sims? The game is nice but I got bored with it after two weeks or so. I would love additional characters, activities, etc.

September 29 2009 at 1:42 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

bjhanifin

You should provide a link to view the results of the poll. While, I do not own an iPhone, I was curious enough about the poll results that I was forced to place a fraudulent vote to see those results.

P.S. I placed 1 vote for "Probably not, the app is enough.", which is just a speculative opinion, since I do not own an iPhone or iPod Touch.

September 29 2009 at 12:01 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Phaedrus

What I hate is that apple doesn't allow in-app purchases in free titles. If they did, we would finally have a demo system. People could just make their games free, and only include the first few levels. And then allow people to purchase the rest of the game for what would be the price of the whole game. Then, you wouldn't have to restart either.

September 29 2009 at 11:34 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Monica

I've never liked the idea of micro transactions and this applies to iPhone apps. I can't stand the idea of paying for game DLC, let alone minor app improvements here. Further each micro transaction at the very least has to cost $0.99, which in turn can add up to quite a bit of money. Obviously good for the developer and Apple. However seeing how there are so many full apps out there already at $0.99, I am not too interested in paying that much for a partial or incremental improvement to an app.

September 29 2009 at 11:07 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Peter

I used it for the push notifications for iCam. Worth it in my opinion. I also plan to use in app purchases for the upcoming navigon update.

September 29 2009 at 11:02 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to Peter's comment

tuaw

Thanks, jpliii! :)

I also think Jonathan nailed it in the first comment: With each app it's different.

With iCam we charge a one-time $0.99 upgrade for Push Notifications because we had to purchase and maintain additional resources to handle them.

September 29 2009 at 12:18 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

OlsonBW

Ok, I'm blind. Where is the live traffic in Navigon. I've looked in the App store and inside of Navigon and can't find where you buy live traffic inside or outside the app. Do you have to do some secret handshake or is it because I bought it when it was $69 USD?

September 29 2009 at 10:36 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to OlsonBW's comment

Jonathan Chan

it's not out yet but it's coming soon, here is the article for it http://www.tuaw.com/2009/09/16/live-traffic-comes-to-mobile-navigator/

September 29 2009 at 11:53 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

RestaurantShareApp

I didn't use in-app purchases but if something meaningful comes around - I will. What disturbs me is thousands of apps very similar in nature like maps of subways in different cities. Better approach is to have 1 app with many maps available as 0.99 purchase. That would be nice...

September 29 2009 at 9:29 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Mike Wills

I just bought 3 in-app things for Boxcar. (two more Twitter accounts and facebook)

September 29 2009 at 9:18 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

gear

I do not do in-app purchasing. But I would very much like to have an app that makes it possible for me to make payments on purchases.

In Europe its fairly common to make purchases using ones cell phone for payment. I'd like an app for this purpose.

September 29 2009 at 7:56 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply