Comments on: The Downward Trend of iPhone Pricing and What it Means for Developers

By: Daily Apple: Clear iPhones, Historical Resistance, Dumb Apple

Daily Apple: Clear iPhones, Historical Resistance, Dumb Apple — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 18:23:55 +0000

[...] essay on app store pricing, this time from Inside iPhone, to go with the one we talked about in an earlier article. The conclusions here are similar, but the analogy the author uses to paint a picture of [...]

By: Daily Apple: Clear iPhones, Historical Resistance, Dumb Apple | TheAppleBlog

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 02:32:15 +0000

By: iPhones World » Blog Archive » The Downward Trend of iPhone Pricing and What it Means for Developers

Sat, 20 Dec 2008 15:44:41 +0000

[...] If you wait long enough, that app you have your eye on will eventually cost {content}.99, or even nothing, depending on how patient you are. A lot of iPhone and iPod touch applications go through a distorted bell curve pricing process, whereby they start off relatively cheap, owing to a “promotional, introductory offer”, then become more expensive (”regular price”), and then dip again, either for a set period to climb the rankings, or forever to stimulate sales for a product that otherwise wasn’t selling. A big reason for the yo-yo cost of apps is the level of competition in the App Store. We saw the number of available applications cross the 10,000 milestone recently, up from only 500 at launch. That’s a 2,000 percent increase. With those numbers, readers can afford to be choosy. (more…) [...]

By: bud

bud — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 08:03:15 +0000

So, its less competitive in the open arena of the intarwebs, where there are many many more applications?

I think the real solution is to merely list the applications spreadsheet style, the old itunes 1.0 way, where you can sort on any descriptive column, such as price, popularity, category. Star rankings from user ratings, as with the music, podcasts and videos, would be nice too. I keep seeing a 4+ logo in the descriptions and click on it hoping to get other apps ranked at 4 stars and up. Oops, whatever that 4+ means, I forget at the moment without context, it means something totally different.

The problem Chockenberry is noting is that the App Store -is- a closed garden, and people are going to try to game the system to be noticed, and that is creating the wild swings. And Apple has made some minor changes to show more at a time. My current problem is, outside publicity for iPhone apps in beta, because the developers want to do things right, but by the time they are read, I have forgotten about them.

What Chockenberry is doing a bit less well than others, is playing the outside PR game as much, although he always has. The Frenzic logo was one of the first wallpapers I downloaded for the iphone when it was first introduced. The Frenzic App did not appear until what, 15 months later?

So apple has tweaked this and that to level the slopes a bit. Its merely a matter of presenting more at a time rather than less. Perhaps there could be a way to NOT see apps we already have.

Oddly enough, before things like the appstore, people would pay five bucks to rent a 30 second ringtone and think nothing of it.

By: Daily Apple: More Clones, More Stark, More iPhones, More Flatulence, More Organized | TheAppleBlog

Sat, 13 Dec 2008 02:42:12 +0000

[...] Store Layout Changed – It may or may not be a response to Iconfactory developer Craig Hockenberry’s open letter, but it seems to make some improvements in the ways apps are organized, and which get highlighted. [...]

By: cmfnyc

cmfnyc — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 21:13:11 +0000

Well if it isn’t the twentieth blog to repeat the Hockenberry pitch. My Google Reader has been clogged with them. It seems every Apple blog had to recycle this story without at least putting a new twist or detail. The exception, I guess, is TUAW, which actually looked at the numbers. Surprise, 99cents are not selling any better than higher priced apps.
http://www.tuaw.com/2008/12/12/stats-99-cent-apps-arent-selling-any-better/

As an end user, the bottom line is: If it’s good, I’ll see it and I’ll buy it. Between the app store reviews and sites like AppShopper, AppVee, TouchArcade, PinchMedia, finding the cream of the crop is not hard.

If devs really create something useful, unique and/or fun, people will buy it. Often, my favorite apps are the ones that cost some coin. To me, it starts to come off as whining. It’s not like they’ve got to try and break into a big box retailer, after all. They’re already there.