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Apple announces ‘upgrade’ to App Store pricing, adding 700 new price points
- ralmidani 4y agoGenuine question: is there a market for a $10,000 app?
- moffatman 4y agoAt that point it would make sense for the vendor to mail you a top-of-the-line non-iOS device to avoid the 30% commission if at all feasible.
- cauthon 4y agoAre you too young to remember “I Am Rich“? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Rich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Rich
- redtriumph 4y ago"The application was removed from the App Store without explanation by Apple the day after its release, August 6, 2008" Would be interesting to know the thought process for doing this.
- martythemaniak 4y agoIt embarrassed Apple.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- fckgw 4y agoIt generated support complaints and provided no value to the user.
- BudaDude 4y agoThe value is there. People buy useless shit all of time to show off their wealth. Is there any difference between having a $10,000 app or having a $100+ cosmetic skin in a game?
- staringback 4y agoSeeing prices list from 2008 having "today's dollars" is really scaring me.
- le_vision 4y agoHighly niche and specialised apps could set such price points. Medical apps come to mind.
- bmarquez 4y agoYeah apps for pilots also came to mind, though I took a look and ForeFlight was $400/year on the iOS store, not a one-time fee.
- sneak 4y agoWhy charge $1000 once when you can charge $400 six times? I refuse to use apps like this. None of my Apple IDs have payment information associated with them.
- ralmidani 4y agoI would imagine any medical app/ERP/etc. would have creative ways to get users to not make a one-time purchase via the App Store. Although certain interpretations of the rules might mean they have to offer App Store signup as an option.
- scarface74 4y agoI’m not aware of many apps like those that aren’t done via a B2B licensing agreement outside of the App Store.
- blowski 4y agoEarly on, I remember there being a tactic for apps where the owner wants them to be findable in the App Store, but doesn't want any new buyers, they set the price to $10K. But these days, I think the most expensive apps are $1K - app.cash, vueCAD Pro and Cyber Tuner.
- tyingq 4y agoI'm sure somebody could market some kind of "exclusive club" app. Virtual Fyre Festival or whatever.
- arriu 4y agoMaybe something like a Bloomberg terminal on the phone? It does seem like quite a reach but I think there are a few legitimate niche markets for that price point.
- bonestamp2 4y agoMaybe not the app itself, but I could see for example, a business wants to purchase $10K worth of advertising on a platform through the their ad channel app.
- hbn 4y agoIt would seem crazy for an ad agency to implement that through an IAP where Apple takes $3k off the top (I assume that 30% rate still applies here?) when you're dealing with high-paying clients that could be told "go to our website to purchase"
- bonestamp2 4y agoI agree, but I guess we could say the same thing for all app and in app purchases.
- hbn 4y agoEh, not really. The benefit of in-app purchases is you can make a button that users can press that's probably already hooked up to their credit card so they can make purchases without the ask of getting them to type in their credit card number, which is a more conscious action that gives them plenty of time to think about whether or not they /really/ want to make that purchase. Amazon's one-click checkout, ShopPay, etc are not just for user convenience! Comparatively, a high-profile client spending tens of thousands of dollars in ads isn't doing so on impulse, they're doing it cause it's their job. They'll open up a browser and punch in some banking details if it's the only way to get those ads out.
- bombcar 4y agoIsn’t the Tesla FSD available as an in-app purchase?
- yreg 4y agoI believe you can buy it through the app but it’s not an IAP. it gets charged to your card associated with your Tesla account. Otherwise Apple would get their 30% and that’s not worth it to Tesla.
- hoherd 4y agoIt looks like this isn't just iOS and iPadOS, but also macOS. In that case, there is plenty of software that fits that bill, such as Maya and Avid. I'm sure there's mass media, banking, video game development, and lots of other software that costs near that, or will some time in the future. Even if it were just for iOS and iPadOS though, they do want iPad Pro to compete with desktops in places where expensive software runs. For instance, Grass Valley Livetouch could be done on an iPad.
- jbverschoor 4y agoWell, if you're gonna ask for 30% on NFT purchases, you better have no ceiling
- timeimp 4y ago10x the number of price points is nuts. Then again, at this point, Apple is a treasury operation that also sells phones and computers.
- r00fus 4y agoBraeburn Capital indeed.
- chollida1 4y ago> Then again, at this point, Apple is a treasury operation that also sells phones and computers. I'm guessing you are joking but incase you were not, Apple still makes far far more from selling new products than they do from investments. So that statement is false or misleading.
- rootusrootus 4y agoBy investments do you mean App Store commissions? They do make quite a lot from that. Not more than they make on hardware sales, but it's a pretty substantial fraction of their revenue.
- jjtheblunt 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braeburn_Capital https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braeburn_Capital
- CharlesW 4y ago> 10x the number of price points is nuts. When you RTFA, you'll learn that Apple is also making it far simpler to manage their app pricing in 45 currencies/175 storefronts. For example: "Starting today, developers of subscription apps will also be able to manage currency and taxes across storefronts more effortlessly by choosing a local storefront they know best as the basis for automatically generating prices across the other 174 storefronts and 44 currencies. Developers will still be able to define prices per storefront if they wish. The pricing capability by storefront will expand to all other apps in spring 2023." Additional capabilities are noted in the announcement.
- jarrenae 4y agoThis seems like a smart move from Apple to continue expanding into international markets and increasing revenue potential from their subscription models. Offering a wider range of price points will allow developers to better tailor their pricing to different markets, and it will also give consumers more flexibility when choosing which apps to pay for. It'll be interesting to see how this change affects the App Store ecosystem in the coming months, and whether it leads to more satisfied users or possibly more predatory subscriptions. The increased flexibility in pricing could be a great benefit for developers and consumers, but I'm going to keep an eye on how it impacts the meta of the pricing models. EDIT: Not sure why this was flagged/replied to as GPT - I wrote this. In retrospect I could have not summarized parts of the post, since ideally we've all read from the source information. Live and learn.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- arriu 4y agoSo no changes to the 30% yet?
- bonestamp2 4y agoNot since the change in 2020 (where developers earnings less than $1 million pay 15%).
- CharlesW 4y agoNot beyond their most recent change of commission being 15% for new developers, and developers who made less than $1M in the previous calendar year.
- grezql 4y ago
- jayrhynas 4y agoThey introduced 15% for apps < $1M/year two years ago.
- MBCook 4y agoI wonder if more apps will go for, say 50¢, instead of free + $1.00 IAP. I miss the pre-IAP days.
- asadlionpk 4y agoIsn't this IAP model better for both users and makers?
- 4ad 4y agoWhich IAP model?
- stephc_int13 4y agoI think the free-to-play model has been destructive for many apps and games. The rush to the bottom with $1 price tier, introduced by Apple, was also destructive in itself. The App Store is a huge market, fortunes have been built, but I know many indie developers who have been reluctant to adopt the F2P model. As a user, I don't like it either.
- sgk284 4y agoDefinitely not better for users. You used to buy an app and get everything it has to offer. You wouldn't have to worry about getting a useless app and having to pay another $1,000 to get it functional. And you'd know that any reviews of the app are inclusive of functionality you'll have access to. With IAP, it's really difficult to know what you're getting and how much it will cost you in the end. And reviews may be discussing a completely different app experience. Plus the constant feeling that you're being nickel and dimed.
- Someone1234 4y agoIAPs don't share over Apple Family, purchased-apps do. So I'm going to say no.
- dangoor 4y agoIAPs _can_ share for the family: https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/4/22154178/apple-family-sharing-allows-subscriptions-in-app-purchases https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/4/22154178/apple-family-sha... It's the developer's choice, just like family sharing for the original purchase. This was a good move, since so many apps went from paid to free demo +IAP to unlock. I think a lot of devs who previously allowed family sharing for paid apps have turned family sharing on for IAP.
- danjc 4y ago“The team has been hard at work this week and we’re now happy to announce that the number line has even more numbers available in it.”
- smoldesu 4y agoYou have to hand it to the bean-counters for finding a new way to butcher their cash cow.
- archildress 4y agoCan't wait for the courageous design decision to then remove numbers from the follow-up release for more simplicity.
- qzw 4y ago“Our metrics show that less than 0.02% of all apps are using the $26.65 and $57.30 price points. They are therefore no longer available to new apps. Existing apps using these price points will be required to change to one of the other supported price points by March 1, 2024.”
- hackernewds 4y agoThe hallmarks of a true monopoly here
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- 015a 4y agoI don't agree with most of what Musk does; but if this is the kind of innovation that requires a team of highly compensated tech employees and warrants a press release; something is actually, seriously wrong with efficiency in companies like Apple, and maybe he's actually right that Twitter, or many companies, could run better on far fewer employees.
- 4y ago
- binarymax 4y agoI’m not an App Store seller so I have no idea what this means. You can’t just pick any number that you want to sell your app for? You have predetermined prices set by Apple?
- mknapper1 4y agoCorrect, only pre-approved price points are allowed.
- spiffytech 4y agoYep. And previously you couldn't choose a non-zero price lower than $0.99, so the new price choices will probably go to use.
- threeseed 4y agoAs I mentioned above pretty sure this was a limitation of their SAP based system and the way it was integrated with the iTunes Store (what App Store used) that required you to pre-define price points.
- RetpolineDrama 4y agoCorrect, Apple requires you to use one of it's artisanal price points, hand-selected from a only the most psychologically supple increments.
- artdigital 4y agoIt works in tiers. You can set the price point to be tier 1, 2, 3, 4 and so on, with tier 1 being $0.99, or whatever the lowest price point is in all the other countries that the AppStore is in
- a_c 4y agoActually what the motivation in having price point ending in .99? Why can't I simply price my app at, for instance, 10? I understand there is a pricing psychology in play and I faintly remember it has something to do with accounting but I can't recall the specifics. Can anyone shed some insight?
- coder543 4y ago> Why can't I simply price my app at, for instance, 10? The article says you can. It's one of the "supported conventions".
- a_c 4y agoMy bad, completely missed the second table. Thanks for pointing it out!
- nine_k 4y agoThe psychology is (allegedly) simple. When you see a price like $4.99, unless you're pre-conditioned, you are expected to read it as FOUR-99, essentially $4, even though it's $5 for all practical purposes. Often it is styled as $4.⁹⁹ to double down on this effect. This looks silly, and many people, including me, have taught themselves to recognize this pattern and round the price correctly without a mental effort. Some people, of course, fall for it; I suppose younger kids are heavily affected.
- ryandrake 4y agoHow can it be that anyone in the world falls for this anymore? My daughter recognized this obvious pattern when she was 7 years old: "It's $5, dad, why don't they just say $5?" I wonder if pricing something at $4.99 have anything more than a vague subliminal effect these days?
- stephencanon 4y agoEveryone is absolutely consciously aware of it, and this has always been true. It still works just fine via your subconscious.
- sebrind 4y agoMy internal reading voice sounds like Tim Cook whenever I read Apple’s announcements
- timbre1234 4y agoGive me an option to search for "no ads" in an app, or give me nothing. I've simply stopped buying iOS apps because I'm done with the ad loads.
- devmor 4y agoSame here. It's ridiculous that I should pay for an app and have to deal with banners and popups regardless.
- nailer 4y agoYep. “Ad Supported” is not “free”
- SomeHacker44 4y agoLikewise, I want to search for "no IAP" apps.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- TrueGeek 4y agoI don't mind IAP necessarily, but it's frustrating when you download an app and then it immediately says you have to pay $10 a month to even open it. Those shouldn't be listed as "free" in the App Store and should be separate from an app that might be "free" but have a minor feature disabled by an IAP.
- nickthegreek 4y agoI want to search for no subs. I dont want to see a result for a $5/week wallpaper app.
- aeternum 4y agoNo subs and no ads would be great.
- 4y ago
- Overtonwindow 4y agoHow many apps have you purchased from the App Store? I have only purchased five apps since 2008. Are people just spending lots of money on apps or am I out of the norm?
- howinteresting 4y agoAccording to the Epic v. Apple decision: * The vast majority of app store revenue is from games. * A small number of "whales" spend almost all of the money -- presumably rich kids and adults, and people with an unfortunate gambling addiction.
- intrasight 4y agoThis is why I find it so baffling that there are so many devs/companies chasing the golden ring of app revenue with sincerity when clearly is a very warped marketplace. What types of useful, non-scam apps do people look for and buy that lead devs to believe there's some opportunity? Why create it as an app and deal with all that BS when you could just make a nice web site/PWA?
- earthnail 4y agoSome products are designed to make use of the iPhone as a form factor. Then you can’t make a PWA. But yes, the market is warped and Apple has a lot of work to do to make it a better marketplace. This is a step in the right direction though. Maybe more steps will follow.
- super256 4y agoI spent ~150€ since 2018, mostly for productive apps. Canarymail (A mail client which supports SMTP streaming + PGP) - I think was about 30€ lifetime. StrongBox Pro (A Keepass 2 client) - 80€ Lifetime ProCreate - 10€ Lifetime Affinity Designer 1 - 12€ lifetime FEZ - 5€ Lifetime (Game) TweetBot - 5€ Lifetime but now abandoned for Subscription Software. Doesn't work anymore, I'm using the normal Twitter App now (became usable over the last few years). The only app where I was disappointed in doing a lifetime purchase. It was abandoned really quickly after my purchgase. Blitzer Pro - 10€ Lifetime Threema - 4€ Lifetime DWD WarnWetter - 2€ Lifetime. Most accurate weather app for Germany Facetune 1 - 4€ (Didn't fix my face! Surpise!) Reeder - 5€ RSS Feed App, I use this together with Miniflux Server My last purchase was in 2021, Reeder. I made most purchases when I got the devices, and all lifetime over SaaS purchases have paid for themselves by now. :) But honestly, this was more than I expected.
- rootpk 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- black_puppydog 4y agoSo, never having bothered with Apple hard-/software I am a bit confused... A developer can't just set a price for something? But then out of the first 10000 natural numbers, Apple semi-arbitrarily select a set of 900 "known-good" numbers that work well for prices? Like, as if the other numbers are somehow bad prices? If you charge someone $7,43 for something, the ghost of Steve Jobs will start haunting you? That's, like... I don't even know. Feels infantilizing to me. Or what am I missing?
- fungiblecog 4y agoYep, in the old days you would provide the ability to set a price. now we need teams of marketers to introduce pointless complexity...
- barumrho 4y agoOne reason I'm aware of is for foreign customers who are buying in foreign currencies. As a developer, I don't want to set prices in every currency, so they translate the price grid for me which I found useful.
- black_puppydog 4y agoShouldn't that work for any price you give them? It's literally a multiplication with a number they pull per-day as the conversion rate. That wouldn't change if the price wasn't one of "their" numbers...
- barumrho 4y agoThis means that for foreign customers of yours, your product will have constantly fluctuating price. I personally don't find that desirable. Also, there is some considerations to be made for purchasing power especially for items like apps. $1 might be trivial in the US, but it may not be so in a third world country.
- seydor 4y ago
- countvonbalzac 4y agoThey say they support up to $10,000 in one part but then in the chart the $100 increment only goes up to $9,999.99, so which is it? $9,999.99 or $10,000?
- modeless 4y agoSo you can sell an app for $0.29 now? That's cool actually if true. The rest seems silly.
- fmajid 4y agoStill no easy way for app developers to handle upgrades. Apple really wants to push apps towards profitable but exploitative subscription pricing models.
- TheJoeMan 4y agoAnd selling to business customers who don't have the huge IT dept. to setup a full Apple Business Account is a nightmare! Most employees use their own iPhones, and Apple specifically closed the Volume Purchase Program. The VPP was a way for a small company to basically purchase download codes and distribute as needed.
- Karunamon 4y agoOne man IT department here: eh? While the 1st time set up was a bit silly, involving digging up a duns number and having our CTO call for some reason, after that it was pretty smooth sailing. SimpleMDM handles the device onboarding, assigning software licenses basically boils down to purchasing them in the Apple business portal and then handing them out through MDM.
- kybernetyk 4y agoWill this solve the issue that the $49.99 tier equals to a 59.99 EUR price? I get a ton of messages every week by would-be Euro customers complaining why the fuck I am fleecing them with a 59.99 EUR price when the US price is $49.99 and the exchange rate is currently roughly 1:1.
- zimzam 4y agoWhen it comes to differences in hardware prices between the US & EU, VAT taxes are often most of the difference: are there VAT taxes on app sales too?
- FateOfNations 4y agoYes. VAT typically applies to any transaction where a business sells something.
- pasc1878 4y agoThe EUR price includes VAT, Americans have this odd thing of quoting prices without tax which tends to be illegal elesewhere. OK the US does not have a sales type tax on digital goods,
- dhosek 4y agoDepends on the location. Sales taxes are determined at the state, county and municipal level and apply to different things in different places (so, for example, Illinois does not charge sales tax on magazines, but California does, and the tax rate on a single donut may be higher than the tax rate on a dozen donuts (prepared food vs groceries).
- jsjohnst 4y ago> the tax rate on a single donut may be higher than the tax rate on a dozen donuts It’s even worse than that, which I learned unfortunately at a former employer. Two identically priced dresses could have different tax rates based on the formality of one vs the other, ie one being a simple LBD and the other being a sequined evening gown.
- smcleod 4y agoApple needs to make it easier for people pricing their apps fairly for international markets. So many applications and subscriptions are incredibly expensive when they're priced for the USA which has been over valued for so many years now.
- hackernewds 4y agoThat would open up a whole can of worms of users locations being necessary/easy to fake for discounts.
- smcleod 4y agoAs that may be - it should be the incredibly wealthy companies problem to solve, not the users.
- partiallypro 4y agoThey are still taking 30%. When are regulators going to step in on this?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- johnwheeler 4y agoDrop the 30% tax some, there’s a story
- sokoloff 4y agoIt’s 15% for businesses doing under $1M/year on the App Store. https://developer.apple.com/app-store/small-business-program/ https://developer.apple.com/app-store/small-business-program...
- aliqot 4y agoGod damn I'm so tired of the global market.
- dang 4y agoWe changed the URL from https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/12/apple-announces-biggest-upgrade-to-app-store-pricing-adding-700-new-price-points/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/12/apple-announces-bigge... to a third party article I just googled. If there's a better third-party article, we can change it again. Yes, HN has the rule "*Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter" (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), but corporate press releases are so awful to read that I increasingly think we need to make them an exception. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=press%20release%20by%3Adang&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... All the more so because they have a strong incentive to bury the lede (I mean in general—not saying that about this announcement), and while third-party sites have other crap incentives, like sensationalism and clickbait, they at least don't do that.
- jil 4y agohttps://9to5mac.com/2022/12/06/app-store-pricing-changes-developers/ https://9to5mac.com/2022/12/06/app-store-pricing-changes-dev... might be a better URL, perhaps?
- dang 4y agoOk, changed to that from https://appleworld.today/archives/101157 https://appleworld.today/archives/101157. Thanks!
- screamingninja 4y ago> https://appleworld.today/archives/101157 https://appleworld.today/archives/101157 > The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.
- lilyball 4y agoLooking at the original press release, I much prefer it to this third-party site. All the third-party site really did was remove a tiny bit of fluff, but it's having intermittent loading issues and is absolutely covered in ads if you aren't using an ad blocker. It also removes some of the actual content!
- raydiatian 4y agoNow this has me wondering: who has the most expensive product on the App Store, what is it and how much does it cost? — edit — Looks like the award goes to an app for Piano Tuners. Find a niche and corner it. $1,000.
- dcdc123 4y agoI had no idea price points were so restrictive on the app store.
- fnordpiglet 4y agoI can’t wait until I can cantor diagonalize App Store price points.
- throwaway4837 4y agoThis shouldn't have to exist if it was designed properly from the start. This seems like backwards technology, something that is built on top of a legacy system and constrained by the design choices of that system. Perhaps that is why "upgrade" is in quotes.
- crystaln 4y agoSo much Apple cynicism here. Apple loves design and beauty. Crisp numbers and stability are more user friendly and aesthetic. Also some numbers have implications in certain markets. Seeing numbers like or $69.42 or $444 or $7.23 is just bad all around. International price conversion while maintaining those is also challenging. Before attacking Apple policies, it's worth considering why their extremely deep design process might have led to that choice.
- postalrat 4y agoBut take your choice: x.99, x.90, x.95. Beautiful design.
- crystaln 4y agoThere's a reason most retail stores use price points and not random numbers. Pricing like this: $7.23 $5.48 $9.21 is just ugly and feels cheap. It's the same reason they have UX standards generally. Why does anyone care about 1 cent on a $5 purchase? Does anyone here care? The new price points seem to provide enough flexibility with less disadvantage. From a business perspective, if I had to guess the increased cognitive load would decrease shopping time and increase decision fatigue. I'd also guess that the retail industry has studied this endlessly, and that Apple is basing their pattern partially on this. This also decreases opportunities for useless psychological price competition and focuses people on quality. Do I want the $1.82 product or the $1.93 product? You probably want the BETTER product. I think you're probably better off having your prices at $0.99, $2.99, and $5.99 rather than $0.84, $2.72, $5.63, even tho the latter is cheaper, particularly if you are in a large store that has thousands of prices.
- hsbauauvhabzb 4y agoWould it be reasonable to assume that the price points help them and not the buyer or seller? Decision fatigue matters more to me than which product you actually pick if I’m taking a clip of the sale regardless
- 4y ago
- musicale 4y ago> The 100 highest price points, however, are only available upon request as part of Apple’s efforts to reduce the potential for scams. Fortunately it doesn't seem to apply to IAP so apps will still be able to sell $99 barrels of smurfberries.
- wackget 4y agoDo you still have to pay $100 every year for the privilege of simply releasing an app? I took one look at that and thought "fuck this". If you're a hobbyist with zero interest in making money off your apps, then you get a giant middle finger from Apple.
- majani 4y agoThat's the $100 working as intended
- olliej 4y agoDoes it add upgrades, free trials, or not charging 30% that SJ originally said included advertising and marketing? No? how strange..
- rognjen 4y agoMaybe the link should be the original press release? https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/12/apple-announces-biggest-upgrade-to-app-store-pricing-adding-700-new-price-points/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/12/apple-announces-bigge...