Developers on avoiding the 99 cent App Store price

Free market is that what you're saying ?

The major problem may not be the price point.
But the amount of spam apps that people are willing to pay, even though they admit it's crap.

Proof: "Nude It" is still a best selling app, despite the amount of one stars they got.

All I've got say is these Apple App Store developers are apparently crying all the way to the bank about the $.99 price point but at least they're going to the bank.

At other markets, such as the Android Market, they're not even able to beg and take money to the bank.

My advice: be careful what you wish for, you break it, you lose it.

I have never purchased an app for money, and aside from a majorly functional, and cheap, GPS system, I've never even come close to thinking about spending for an app.

The ecosystem of app-store prices are a free-market in effect. If developers can't take the heat or sell their apps, they need to either make more palatable applications, or get out of that ecosystem entirely. There is absolutely NOTHING that says app developers should be entitled to a single cent, simply for producing something they wish to sell.

Volume sales at the lowest price point have been / are important for developers because sales numbers are used to calculate all the top 20 charts, and getting in a chart increases your sales notably.

However, with the store becoming more and more crowded the chances of getting into a chart are much smaller nowadays and so devs are going to be tempted to increase their prices to a sustainable level.

The rush to the lowest price was more about charting than anything else IMHO, and once this incentive is removed we might see the market value apps differently.

I haven't bought Canabalt's because of its excessive price so his unjustified pricing hasn't worked on me and I buy a LOT of games including $9.99 ones if I feel they are worth it. Canabalt is not. It's the epitome of a $0.99 game.

So the title of this article should be "Developer on avoiding the 99 cent App Store price", instead of "Developer-s-"

Even if in theory the app is "worth" more than 99 cents, you can't forget that you can get more volume in sales with such low prices. That's why App Store apps are so cheap, even at $5 and $10. In the old days of PalmOS it wasn't strange to see a $30 -game-.

I think we are forgetting something here. An app is not worth 99 cents or even 99 dollars because the developer thinks it is. An app and any other good is worth no more than what the public is willing to pay for it. Really the best way to manage the app store is to allow any price what so ever and let the market take care of the rest.

What's really killing devs is not the SET pricing, but the always CHANGING prices. I know different apps are put out by different developers, but to me, it's one big place o' apps. When I see an app I'm interested in selling for $9.99 on the week of introduction, then $2.99 the next week (and free the following month), that puts in my head that if I wait, I can probably get it for free! Add to that the fact that it's worked well for me in the last few months and I won't impulse buy an app upon release and, once the impulse is gone, chances are there's ANOTHER app that's grabbed my interest by then.

Perhaps instead of setting a price floor, set some kind of price change minimum? (only one change per quarter?) Maybe that would lead these gunshy developers looking for quick sales to stick to it and realize that, once people know that the price is the price, they'll just buy.

Thank you. I was going to post this myself, but you hit it right on.

I think for the first year of the App store keeping things cheap for the consumer was absolutely necessary. Look at the result, over a hundred thousand apps and about 3 billion app downloads between pay and free.

Developers were never forced to be confined to any price point, it has been the market of consumers that bitch whenever an app cracks the dollar mark. And it is the developers themselves that cooperate with this pressure. One thing that will tone down this nonsense is requiring people to actually have downloaded an app in order to comment on it at the app store.

I do agree that there should be two versions of commercial apps and that apple should REQUIRE these two versions so people can try something before buying it. WordProcessor Lite could let you import and edit files but not save. A game with 50 levels could let you only play the first level or two. It's not that hard to both cripple the program and provide a true sense of whether you might want it or not.