App Store Developers Debate Pricing and Marketing

[KindredMAC]

I somewhat agree with the second guy. Many developers of the iPhone are start-up companies or one guy coding the app. They don't have websites or any other way to advertise their apps.

It's not that hard to contact a webmaster of a domain and ask how much it is to advertise on their site. Then create any old GIF or SWF with a hyperlink to your app in the App Store.

Hell if a "coder" can't do it I'll gladly freelance for anyone out there and create some web ads.

 

[Chupa Chupa]

The Appstore made a good start but it suffers from two huge problems.

1) There is no way to try and buy. That leads to lower prices where people are willing to risk on an unseen app. If there were a way to use an app on a trial basis, people could later decide to purchase it or not.

That is not totally true. Many motivated developers put a free "lite" version of their apps alongside the full version. I've upgraded many apps as a result of enjoying the "lite" version. Some developers are lazy though and hope to sell their app w/ just a screen shot.

 

[firewood]

The Appstore made a good start but it suffers from two huge problems.

1) There is no way to try and buy. That leads to lower prices where people are willing to risk on an unseen app.

That does not lead to lower prices. That leads to less sales.

Developers don't have to lower their prices to attempt to make up for lost sales. (I experimented with raising the price on one app while lowering it on another... made around the same amount of revenue per app either way! YMMV.)

I've also done try-before-buy on another platform. Implementing the app time-out and the registration scheme was a pain, and this app produced far less revenue compared with one in the iTunes App store.

And the funny thing is that Apple already has time-limiting DRM for the iPhone... for their movie rentals.

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[ninjadex]

One reason I stopped buying interesting but unnecessary apps as they come out is I got tired of paying $9.99 for every app, then watching them fall to $7.99, then $5.99, then $2.99 as the weeks passed, making me feel like I wasted the $7.

True, pick a price and stick to it for a fairly regular period. If they drop the price to .99 cents "on sale" it really does not give much confidence to potential future customers that the app is worth the whatever the full price may be.

 

[firewood]

What a bunch of hooey. The race to the bottom is called the market.

The market does not force a race to the bottom. The jewelry store nearby does not sell any diamonds for $0.99... in spite of the fact that near-starving people find small ones lying on the ground some places in the world, and there being multiple jewelry stores in my neighborhood. Marketing makes up the price difference.

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[flurffmeister]

Nothing's stopping you from making a $10 app. You just need to market it properly. Make it WORTH someone's time to spend $10 on something they may only play once, twice, or every month or two. Make the experience such an enjoyable or useful or fulfilling one that they do not regret that $10. As the price of the app goes up, so does the challenge in proving it worth the value that you set it at. Or just hop on the bandwagon, price your $10 app at $1, and watch it more than make up for the per-UNIT revenue with sheer volume.

That's why everything's a buck in the music store, and that's why so many apps are starting to show up at a buck. That's the point at which somebody is least likely to mind if they spend that money on something they never end up listening to, using, or playing. Hardly anybody is going to buy a $5 copy of the Macarena. For most, the song isn't listenable for long enough to make it worth the $5. But for every 1 die-hard fan that would still throw $5 at it, there are 20 who would throw $1 at it for the novelty. Now you've made $14 on it instead of $3.50.

Bottom line, your app doesn't have to be a throwaway with limited lifespan and narrow appeal in order to be priced at $1.

 

[kas23]

I don't understand what exactly the problem is? Isn't this how products are sold in any other industry? You lower the price of a product to compete with other products. There is nothing new here. It's the customers that win in a capitalistic society. I agree, the developers should find other ways to market their products.

As for the reasoning that 99 cent will move easier than a more expensive app, there are problems with this reason. Yes, there are hundreds of 99 cent apps that amount to nothing more than fluff. I just don't buy these - they're garbage. Thus, is he saying that people are going to buy the 99 cent apps regardless of their content? Not me. And I hope there's not other people out there that would. I buy my apps based on their content, not their price. I have bought many apps that are $4.99 because their content justifies this price. If a developer make quality apps, people will buy them.

Now, I do agree that it is becoming very hard to search through the mounds and mounds of crap apps. You have to be very on top of your game (constantly checking Appshopper is what I do) to find good apps. It is very hard to find good quality apps. But, this is just due to the organization of the app store, which can be easily fixed.

And I know this may not be entirely fair, but Apple has to start using a garbage filter. We don't need anymore countdown apps (I just my first Valentines Day app - do we really need one for every holiday?), menstrual calenders, aviation checklists, and BMI calculators.

 

[Aeroplane]

Yeah I agree, Beyonce is nothing but a brand.

 

[auxplage]

The App store needs better organization - no doubt about it.

However, that said, everyone needs to take at least one course in microeconomics.

Make an app that is worth $10, and I will buy it.

The initial $10 games were not worth that: There was just limited competition; i.e., the initial sellers were able to extract more money from consumers and attain larger profits. That is not a good thing unless you are a shareholder or developer.

In reality, the big developers are scared to death that they will fail and random person x will win. I love competition.

 

[Sehnsucht]

The only useful, cool and cleanly designed 99-cent app I've found is Clinometer by Peter Breitling. I think I might be one of the very few who'd pay $20 for the "Coolest-Thing-Since-Sliced-Bread" app that we're all waiting for.

"Waaaaahhh! Why is this app TWENTY BUCKS?!!??!!?! C'mon, make it free!!! Waaaaahhh!!!!"

 

[wbeasley]

But prices for most things already do this...

True, pick a price and stick to it for a fairly regular period. If they drop the price to .99 cents "on sale" it really does not give much confidence to potential future customers that the app is worth the whatever the full price may be.

Go to a movie, pay $15, wait a few months, buy the video for $30 or rent it for $5, wait a year and watch it for free on tv or buy it $10. Most entertainment options have this cycle: music, movies, games. If you want it first you usually pay more for it.

A few bucks for an App is cheap enough for most people to try. If it works, is useful or fun then it's done it's job. I'm quite happy with many apps I've bought.

I'm more amazed Microsoft still charge $$$ when OpenOffice is free. I'm not bagging M$'s developement/support costs but sometimes you gotta wonder if they are getting good value for their programming investment. The advice they pay for can't be good... Vista anyone??? Yawn.

 

[kornyboy]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5G77 Safari/525.20)

I tend to agree more with Farmer. I also think that if a well featured app selling for a higher price will actually do well in the App Store. The developer just has to work to stay ahead of the competition.

 

[johnmcboston]

Now that I'm a touch owner and am buying apps - the biggest problem for me on higher priced apps is worrying about liking them/finding them useful. Although it's short money, spending $5 or $10+ on something only to find I don't really like it or use it can prevent me from making the purchase. I am happy to find free 'lite' versions of apps, so I can try before I buy. The reviews help, but they won't help you tell if an app is right for you.

 

[christian_k]

God for bid developers make something consumer friendly in the worst economic time in America's history.

LOL ! Everyone had to buy a house and easily spent 100,000s of $. John Doe can do it so I must do it, too.
Wealth? Income? Who cares?

Now $1,99 for an app (less than a fast food meal!) is too much.

America, America...

Christian

 

[Stately]

There sure is alot of junk in the app store- I think both the developers are right - marketing is important and the junk apps do impede development. It's also increasingly hard to find the gems in the app store since there is so much junk.

I agree it does become difficult to sift through the apps that aren't very valuable. There are some very powerful apps however. As a result, with enough determination, one can sift through the craziness and have a powerful phone.

 

[chameleon81]

I was asking the same question to myself. Why iPhone apps are so cheap? I got motor racer ( the one we had on macrumors website ) and enigmo both of them especially enigmo is an extra ordinary game. Those applications would not sell on any other platform for that price. (They were 0.59 pences if I remember correct)

There must me a reason why people are offering their software so cheap. Either they reach such sales figures because of appstore they do not mind for the cheap price or -which is more likely in my opinion- the structure of APpstore forces people to compete on price nothing else.

 

[kingtj]

I call B.S. on this......

There are PLENTY of quality apps for the iPhone that don't cost a penny!
Look at the popularity of, say, the AP News Wire reader software, or "UrbanSpoon", or the Aurora Feint game. I've personally installed 4 or 5 screens full of FREE applications, games and utilities that I like a lot and find useful.

The *only* reason you see people paying more for software on other phone platforms is because the competition isn't there. If you're tied to a contract for a year or 2 on some Moto Razr phone (say, with US Cellular, for the sake of example), you're stuck buying "BREW" based games and apps from their little "app store", at mostly inflated prices. In the grand scheme of things, they figure "This sucks, but I guess I may as well pay $5.99 for this game if I want to play something on this phone for the next 2 years I'm stuck in this contract that already costs me $60+ a month anyway."

When you develop for the iPhone, yes, you're under more pressure to deliver "value for the dollar". If you can't handle that? Good ... go away and shovel your more costly software at people using inferior phones, who are FORCED to pay more.

The comment in the original article is VERY insightful. Too many developers acted like the Apple app store was some kind of "golden ticket" to generate thousands in "automatic sales". In reality, they need to *advertise* their product just as much as anyone else would. Give people direct links to buy your app from iTunes or whatever ... but MARKET the thing! Otherwise, yeah -- it's gonna sit there with THOUSANDS of other apps, often FREE or 99 cents each, and be BURIED under them.

And this is the reason I'm going towards contract work instead of developing my own apps. If your app is not $0.99 you get bad reviews on how it should be free or cheap, and there is always someone out there willing to copy your app idea, make it cheap and undercut you. Unlike blackberry and Windows Mobile users iPhone users are not willing to pay for quality software.

With that said, there are not that many quality apps on the store either...people are just trying to make a quick buck so they "bust" out a crappy app in a week or too and post it on the store.

I doubt I will release anything on the store under $4.99 now, it's not worth my time to create useless apps.

 

[Luke1robb]

Aye, and I can't accept that the only apps that are any good are the ones that make it into the top 25. I suspect there are gems that aren't regarded as such due to not being free or not being 99 cents. I'm not sure how you find them otherwise though. If they aren't featured in some way, they are buried in 10,000 other apps.

Eventually we won't search for apps in the app store at all I guess. We'll google for them and follow links to the app store just to make our purchases.

This would be an interesting idea, just google an app or what you need in an app and a whole list pops up... Google? You out there? (rhetorical question) Please make a new Lab that is app search, how hard could this be to do, but how amazing would it be.

 

[rotarydialz]

One idea is dor developers to release the first level of a game for free and charge for the full version. Another idea is for developers to provide a link to a demo of their app. I'm not interested in paying for something that may turn out to be garbage. Maybe there should be a group of impartial reviewers who would be given a free copy of an app to test it's worthiness. Pay now, cry later is not the best business model.

 

[tveric]

I'm amazed that a developer has the gall to complain about the App Store.

Consider this: anyone can submit an app to the store, and most of them get approved, giving them INSTANT access to a marketplace of millions of people. Contrast this with music, movies.... or even the software you see for sale at your local electronics chain! If a no-name filmmaker makes a movie, can he get it to be shown at multiplexes around the world? No. Can a musician instantly get his album into Wal-Mart and everywhere else without a record deal? No. If you write some great software for, say, a Mac, will your software show up in a nice box in the local Apple retail store? No.

Part of the reason we have to pay $10 for a movie when it comes out or $15-20 for a CD is that the distribution channels are so tightly controlled. It's really a de facto monopoly that allows those in charge to get more $$$/person than they would get in a truly open market. Their heavy marketing takes care of ensuring that enough people feel they HAVE to pay $X.99 for whatever they're peddling.

By contrast, the App Store has removed these distribution barriers, mostly. The downside for a developer, of course, is that suddenly everyone else has the same access to this new market that you do - making it extremely difficult to make your product stand out. So what do you do? As some have suggested, put up a 'Lite' version of your app for free - it's kind of the new shareware. But don't cry to me about how it's a race to the bottom - the App Store is true capitalism, the good apps will survive and people will pay what they're worth, because in a real open market, the definition of what something is worth is simple - it's whatever people are willing to pay for it.

There's another strength to the App Store that not many have mentioned - if I don't want to pay for a movie or CD or even Photoshop, it's pathetically easy to download any of these from the Net and use them. If I want to do the same for an App Store app, I have to jailbreak my iPhone - not a trivial matter and I run the risk of not having the phone work properly and i can't update the iPhone software, etc... by making it so difficult, Apple has provided protections to App Store developers that movie studios and recording artists (not to mention software companies like Adobe) don't have.

 

[pubwvj]

Need More Demos

The problem with most of the more expensive Apps is there is no try before you buy. I don't want to spend money before knowing the application is going to do what I need. This was the whole point of the evolution of demoware, shareware and trials. Some iApps developers get this point and they bring out free Lite versions. I have downloaded quite a few of those, found several that I really liked and bought the full version.

There is another major problem with the whole Apps issue: integration with the desktop. If I'm going to have applications on my iPod Touch or iPhone to do real work then they need to be able to share data back and forth with my Mac notebook computer where I do most of my work. For example, most of the spreadsheets in the Apps store are a joke. Besides not working well, crashing and such they don't share data with the desktop machines. Building spreadsheets is hard to do on the iApp. However the iApps are a great place to use ones that were created on the desktop. But then one needs a way to transfer the saved data back home. Some developers are working on this issue but it is convoluted right now.

This will improve but until it gets seriously better the iApps aren't worth more than a couple of bucks. They're just teasers as to what could be...

 

[liptonlover]

tveric, it's not that developers aren't grateful. I'm grateful that I can write an iphone app and *instantly* have it available to the whole iphone community. That being said, apple owes the developers more as well. Apple needs the developers as much as the developers need apple. So they do have a right to complain, in the hopes that a better relationship comes about.
The problem is partly apple's fault, because of how the store works. The ratings inveritably go down when users delete apps, and position is based solely on downloads. Finally, the new section is so messed up it's impossible to find new apps. If they fix that, the prices will go where they're supposed to be and we'll get better apps. The games that compare to psp and ds games so far are all $10 and under. That's not fair to the developers but it's what they have to do.
Nate

 

[chameleon81]

tveric did you see the most popular games or applications recently? I saw turkey hunt for a long while. Did you check the game? Appstore has to change the way it rates the software and the way we browse the store.

 

[Luke1robb]

One idea is dor developers to release the first level of a game for free and charge for the full version. Another idea is for developers to provide a link to a demo of their app. I'm not interested in paying for something that may turn out to be garbage. Maybe there should be a group of impartial reviewers who would be given a free copy of an app to test it's worthiness. Pay now, cry later is not the best business model.

Have you read the stories about the promo codes, apple is giving out? This basically allows for this to happen.

 

[Xian Zhu Xuande]

I think there are a lot of developers who will not develop for a 99 cent platform. Someone out there has the next Better Than Sliced Bread application idea but won't build it because they know they can't sell it for the 5 or 10 or 20 bucks needed to build and support it.

There are plenty of high-end applications on the iPhone which are sold at higher pricepoints without trouble. This ranges from professional apps to references like the American Heritage Dictionary, right down to games. Fieldrunners has been purchased a multitude of times and it is, what, $4? $5? There are other $10 games which sell every bit as well. Just look at the top charts for paid apps. It is amazing enough to even see some of them among the $.99 apps (and not all of them got there by being free for a while).

I'll wager the apps being made by some of the whiners aren't exactly top-tier revolutionary or production quality products.

As for me, I've spent over $150 on apps. I know a few people who have spent just about as much. There are people out there who actually have a job and don't mind spending some money on a great app for their phone.