App Cubby Blog – Free and Low-Cost Apps
App Cubby Blog – Free and Low-Cost Apps: “The pool of time users spend on smartphones is staggering and growing rapidly, but it is not infinite. The more time people spend with useful/entertaining free apps, the less need they have to actually pay for apps. That doesn’t mean people will never pay for apps — the market for paid apps has continued to grow alongside free and freemium apps — but users have been conditioned to expect more and more for less and less.”
(Via @drbarnard)
The App Store sorely misses two pricing options:
- Paid upgrades
- Trial versions
These options evolved in the software community over decades of software sales, proving their merit over time. In one swipe, Apple prevented them from touching iOS devices.
Developers work around the lack of these options by creating new apps instead of paid upgrades, in the first case, and offering free versions of apps that are limited or display ads, in lieu of trial versions. Neither benefits customers or developers.
With paid upgrades, developers can maintain a revenue stream over the life of an application while rewarding loyal customers. Without paid upgrades, developers either ensure that their best customers disappear from their revenue stream forever, or they release new apps (such as Rope’n’Fly 3) and tell their best customers that loyalty means nothing. Everyone gets the same “upgrade” price: free or full.
The Free Version/Paid Version dance isn’t much better, as it requires customers to download the free app, try it out, then trek back to the App Store and find the paid app, download it, then delete the free app. The advent of in-app purchases have improved this experience by allowing you to download one free app, then later unlock things by purchasing from within the app. By explicitly banning trial or time-locked versions, however, Apple has limited what incremental value you can offer in a paid version, so most in-app purchases eliminate ads or sell inessential app enhancements. The free version, after all, must be fully functional without the in-app purchases.
Both these practices conspire to starve developers from revenue streams–while prices race downwards. Many customers have become a surly bunch, too, decrying an app as utter rubbish if it doesn’t perform some task it was never intended to do, for example, or moaning about the “complete waste” of an amount of money they’d be unwilling to bend over in the street to pick up. And don’t get me started about customers who write glowing text attached to one-star reviews that obviously don’t understand which extreme is “best.”
As a customer, I’d rather pay more for fun games or useful apps, pay an upgrade fee for significant upgrades, and try time-locked versions to determine whether to buy something–in short, follow software purchase patterns that have evolved over time and have proved they work. That way, I can support developers I feel deserve it while getting apps at fair prices.
After I read AppCubby’s article, I purchased $5 worth of coins on TempleRun and unlocked the football player I didn’t really want, just so I could support an app that I find fun and that dominates the iPhones of most of my children (and, I understand, of several NBA stars, including LeBron James and Kevin Durrant) . It felt a little like charity, giving money for something I didn’t really want, but the TempleRun developers earned the money with their free game. I wish there was a better way.