App Store & The Nonexistent Problem of Pricing

The Price is Hardly Ever a Problem

Nice article by Elia Freedman, founder & CEO of Infinity Softworks commenting on the issues with Apple App Store pricing:

The problem with app pricing has almost nothing to do with pricing. (Surprise!) The problem is distribution. And this also happens to be one aspect of the iOS ecosystem that everyone loves.

In the iOS world, there is only one place to buy apps: the App Store. Because there is only one place to buy apps, everyone goes there to find them. Because everyone goes there to find them and the contents are exactly the same for every app (a description, some keywords and a few pictures), it is nearly impossible to differentiate your product.

True that. I remember not too long ago, when I was trying to locate one of my favourite apps, Vesper, without remembering the name correctly) and I had to manually swipe through a number of similarly defined products. Similar products, just different price tags, like in grocery store. But, methinks, it’s the whole purpose of this medium.

In addition, there is an enlightening follow-up on the matter by Marco Arment providing some facts about the reality and dynamism of distributing apps via the App Store. In reality, after initial launch success, the stats become bleak and sales plummet, levelling out after a while:

To date, I’ve invested about two weeks of time into Bugshot and it has made a total of $3,531.89. That’s not bad at all, but it’s not going to go very far, especially considering that the average for the last 5 days is just $47 per day, and the trend is clearly falling quickly.

Bugshot got great press, but that’s also most of the press that it’s ever going to get.

Being a developer and trying to make a living of it is a tough job, no matter how you look at it.