14 ms·

Apple uses price points rather than having developers explicitly specify prices because they're currency-independent: you specify a price point and Apple choos

Apple uses price points rather than having developers explicitly specify prices because they're currency-independent: you specify a price point and Apple chooses appropriate prices for each of the ~175 different storefronts where your app could be available. Apple then periodically adjusts the international prices as exchange rates fluctuate, to keep them in parity with the US prices at the same tiers. The alternative would be to have developers manually specify prices for each region, which wouldn't really scale for a lot of developers (keeping track of exchange rates for 175 different regions is work). Or to do automatic currency conversion from {developer's native country here}, which would eliminate some of the manual work but lead to "ugly" prices in other regions (no x.00 or x.99 pricing), unless they had some rounding scheme to make them look nicer, and then you're almost back at the current price point scheme.

BulgarianIdiot 4y ago
Thank you for clarifying this. This is such an Apple thing to do. Frankly it doesn't matter what the exact price is. All economics are approximate.
- decadancer 4y ago
  I don't think that's a bad practice. I'm Russian and Steam games are (were) 1.5x-2x times cheaper for Russia compared to Europe and Americas, even before regional passes. I don't know whether that was responsiblity of devs or storefront, but it seemed quite a fair and profitable practice, because the price point you are willing to pay for a game (or an app) is different for people from different economical and cultural backgrounds. You aren't getting a game for 80$ if your monthly salary is 300
  - alexandre_m 4y ago
    The economics of all of that seem sketchy to me. It sounds like the main North American market is subsidizing the apps being produced and sold worldwide. Does the same logic apply for other virtual good such as digital music elsewhere?
    - pvarangot 4y ago
      It could also be said that the cost of compliance and the cost coming from the litigiousness of American consumers shouldn't be subsidized by countries where selling an app is monumentally easiest and cheaper.
    - parker_mountain 4y ago
      > the main North American market is subsidizing the apps being produced and sold worldwide I think you'll find that this has been the practice for many decades. A stark example is medicine pricing.
      - zinekeller 4y ago
        It's not really. The US medical system has this tendency to inflate pricing in a cat-and-mouse system where drug companies and insurance companies try to duke out what is the "correct" price of a drug. Setting it too high and the insurers won't cover it, too low and the pharmaceutical companies are "losing" profits to insurers. It's a terrible feedback loop that hampers those who can't afford insurance because the premiums are too high because pharmaceutical companies know that in most cases insurers will pay.
        willnonya 4y ago
        I think youre missing several inputs into your feedback loop. The original statement about the US system bearing the brunt of development stands. It's also true that insurers influence the market. Both are true. There are also government inputs into the market, political inputs a d supply chain elements that all feed into this. The one stakeholder will little real input in the end consumer who gets stuck paying whatever the others have decided they'll allow...
        kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
        That doesn't explain the behavior of off-patent drugs being jacked up in price on a whim or near identical variants being made to extend patent protection and maintain the predatory pricing of the name brand. Their development costs are already recouped during the initial patent phase. Tweaking things a little doesn't cost them nearly as much.
  - lzaaz 4y ago
    This is fair. OTOH, you have the single European market (the EU forces games, apps, hardware, etc to be sold at the same price everywhere in the EU in practical terms), which has shafted poor countries-it's disgraceful that a Swedish costumer pays the same price for an iPhone than a Portuguese costumer while making several times as much money every month.
    - decadancer 4y ago
      That's kinda messed up. ALL hardware?
      - sofixa 4y ago
        No, they're mistaken, there is no such thing.
      - argsnd 4y ago
        It’s not true. That guy doesn’t really know what he’s talking about.
    - sofixa 4y ago
      > OTOH, you have the single European market (the EU forces games, apps, hardware, etc to be sold at the same price everywhere in the EU in practical terms), That's not true, where are you imagining this from? Hardware certainly doesn't cost the same, at the very least there are different VAT levels, but also pricing is adapted to the local market (literally just checked, i can get an Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 for 300€ less in Bulgaria compared to France). Software I'm unsure how to check, but Netflix costs varies by county.
      - lzaaz 4y ago
        You can buy it directly from Bulgaria to save 300€ then. It would be illegal for the shop to tell you you have to pay more for buying from another country. >Software I'm unsure how to check, but Netflix costs varies by county. If it does (I don't think so, the minimal differences are because of VAT) you can subscribe from another European country (using a VPN or whatever) and Netflix can't ban you or block you from using it (like they would if you bought the subscription from a third world country for example) Is it fair that both Finland and Italy pay 7.99€/month for the basic plan? (This is why I said "in practical terms")
  - klodolph 4y ago
    From what I understand, the Russian market has a lot of tech-savvy users but disposable income is lower. If you didn’t price your app for the Russian market, it was more likely to get pirated or cloned. Similar caveats in certain parts of eastern Europe. At least, that was the justification I’ve heard. Different story in places like Africa, where you often make a completely different app to contend with things like data caps and slow networks (e.g. Facebook Lite).
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- sushid 4y ago
  It kind of does, no? Would you want your recurring charge to fluctuate randomly just because the developer converts everything to their currency? Or what about getting screwed over and being charged an exorbitant price because you live in a poorer country and the developer wasn't considerate enough to add regional pricing based on your PPP? You'd have to use a third party to remedy this but Apple handles it for you.
- Waterluvian 4y ago
  Indeed. It’s a very smart thing to do. Basically a Big Mac index approach.
- eftychis 4y ago
  Disagree on that. Is Apple trying to arbitrage currencies at this point?
  - selectodude 4y ago
    Not explicitly but part of their 30 percent cut is handling currency risk, yes.
- jorblumesea 4y ago
  It's a decision that actually benefits the customer and developer enormously. Imo an "apple thing to do" is to change chargers simply to make a profit. Apple handling price/international conversions and currency fluctuations seems immensely useful.
hackernewds 4y ago
I find it hard to agree with > developers manually specify prices for each region, which wouldn't really scale for a lot of developers while this also is more aligned to Apple's goals, unless there's also a proven and generalized (geographically and at all price points, app types) observation where the price looking beautiful as 0.99 massively offsets the actual revenue gains of being 1.23. > "ugly" prices in other regions (no x.00 or x.99 pricing), unless they had some rounding scheme to make them look nicer,
darth_avocado 4y ago
Not to be that guy, but isn’t that like, what computers are for?
- crystaln 4y ago
  Knowing that Apple is pretty smart, I'm sure they use computers, but only update occasionally so prices aren't constantly fluctuating. Apple loves design and beauty. Crisp numbers and stability are more user friendly and aesthetic.
  - darth_avocado 4y ago
    Knowing apple, more likely scenario is that the systems are old and allowing such flexibility would be a Herculean task that needs a lot of investment with not a lot of upside. TLDR; if it works don’t touch it.
hitpointdrew 4y ago
You would think a company like Apple could easily build a system that updated exchange rates daily and could do the simple math on any price. Having "price points" seems arbitrarily and stupid.
- simonw 4y ago
  They could do that, but then users in some countries would have to pay 0.693 of their local currency or whatever. Why should the US be the only country that gets friendly looking prices?
  - bmicraft 4y ago
    Or just let the dev specify if they want to round prices to some precision?
  - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
    I'm an American. I routinely buy things in GBP, EUR, and JPY and the amounts convert to an arbitrary number in USD. So what? It is displayed to me as 9.99 EUR. I understand I'm not going to have a nice, pretty .99 at the end of my credit card transaction.
    - gumby 4y ago
      Yes, but you don't know that in the App store: you're buying from your "local" store regardless of where the developer is.
    - simonw 4y ago
      I would expect that the vast majority of human beings very rarely buy anything in a currency other than that of their own country.
  - jw1224 4y ago
    The point is that price points already are friendly-looking in every country. Price points are adjusted in each country, they’re not a 1:1 match with $USD.
slg 4y ago
>but lead to "ugly" prices in other regions Isn't this change an introduction of those ugly prices? If I'm reading the new rules correctly, Apple now supports prices like 7.39 or 37.40. I guess they don't end in a 1-4 or 6-8, but they aren't the cleanest numbers either. And if that last digit is really the problem, rounding to the nearest 5 is always a possibility.
- mynameisvlad 4y ago
  7.39 should be possible as part of the 10c price step, but how would you get 37.40 out of the system? You could do 37.00, 37.90, 37.95, or 37.99 via the "X." ones, and the first category would all end in X9.
  - slg 4y ago
    They say .50 price steps are possible in the 10-50 range so X.90 + .50.
    - mynameisvlad 4y ago
      So the way I read it is as two separate systems: Developers can go in 10c price steps from $0.29 to $9.99 (0.39, 0.49, 0.59, etc), or in 50c price steps from $0.49 to $49.99 (0.49, 0.99, 1.49, 1.99, etc), etc OR developers can use the 4 supported conventions for any price in those ranges, as long as you fit within the convention. But you cannot start at a supported convention and then use the price steps.
pavon 4y ago
Thanks for that explanation. Is that why the price point ranges overlap - does the increment you select tell Apple how much they should round by when converting currency? For example, on the surface it seems redundant to have overlapping prices bands $0.29-$9.99 in $0.10 increments $0.49-$49.99 in $0.50 increments Since 10 cent increments include 50 cent increments, so why not say: $0.29-$9.99 in $0.10 increments $9.99-$49.99 in $0.50 increments
- willnonya 4y ago
  "does the increment you select tell Apple how much they should round by when converting currency?" Not in anyway beyond simple math...thisnwhole scheme likely has more to do with ensuring and determining commissions that anything else.
willnonya 4y ago
The alternative would be to have developers set their price point and currency then allow Apple to still do the international conversion rates. There is zero benefit in these conversions to only having preset price points. Your answer may be factually true but it is logically flawed. Unless there is some marketing value here I suspect it has more to do with making sure they don't lose a half cent of commission rather than benefiting anyone else in any real way.
stjohnswarts 4y ago
Since you seem to know a bit can you set which countries/regions have access say something like "only north america and Africa" ? Not an apple dev so I don't have a clue.
- WA 4y ago
  Yes. You can include or exclude regions and individual countries. Another interesting thing: Apple’s price tiers are anchored to the US dollar. Even though I am a German developer, selling only to German speaking people in the EU, I have to adjust my price tier if the USD/EUR exchange rate is changed by Apple. They check for this roughly once per quarter.
ngcc_hk 4y ago
Apple did its best to reduce the pain points. Sometimes by adding more like butterfly if they goes off course. But it is all about user or developer experience. Just not always on it. Intent is different from result. Here seems make some sense.
somedude895 4y ago
This blows my mind, I never thought about that. I imagine automatic currency conversion would make it especially hard for any company outside US/EU. They'd stick out like a sore thumb with their weird prices.
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  There are also adjustment for the general price of things in the country. e.g. a 1USD price straight converted to the currency could be too high in a weak economy, so the actual price would be set at 0.7 or 0.5 usd
- xwolfi 4y ago
  The USD/EUR exchange rate varies as widely, if not more, than the USD/JPY, price points ensure a sort of strategic pricing in each region.
WA 4y ago
No. The alternative would be a button "apply current exchange rates to all prices" and an additional input field where you can override this price per country. This is how Amazon does it for Kindle self-publishing.
ChrisRR 4y ago
Of course that's the very Apple approach. Why not give them the option of using their automatic price adjustments rather than making people use it?

BulgarianIdiot 4y ago

Thank you for clarifying this. This is such an Apple thing to do. Frankly it doesn't matter what the exact price is. All economics are approximate.

decadancer 4y ago
I don't think that's a bad practice. I'm Russian and Steam games are (were) 1.5x-2x times cheaper for Russia compared to Europe and Americas, even before regional passes. I don't know whether that was responsiblity of devs or storefront, but it seemed quite a fair and profitable practice, because the price point you are willing to pay for a game (or an app) is different for people from different economical and cultural backgrounds. You aren't getting a game for 80$ if your monthly salary is 300
- alexandre_m 4y ago
  The economics of all of that seem sketchy to me. It sounds like the main North American market is subsidizing the apps being produced and sold worldwide. Does the same logic apply for other virtual good such as digital music elsewhere?
  - pvarangot 4y ago
    It could also be said that the cost of compliance and the cost coming from the litigiousness of American consumers shouldn't be subsidized by countries where selling an app is monumentally easiest and cheaper.
  - parker_mountain 4y ago
    > the main North American market is subsidizing the apps being produced and sold worldwide I think you'll find that this has been the practice for many decades. A stark example is medicine pricing.
    - zinekeller 4y ago
      It's not really. The US medical system has this tendency to inflate pricing in a cat-and-mouse system where drug companies and insurance companies try to duke out what is the "correct" price of a drug. Setting it too high and the insurers won't cover it, too low and the pharmaceutical companies are "losing" profits to insurers. It's a terrible feedback loop that hampers those who can't afford insurance because the premiums are too high because pharmaceutical companies know that in most cases insurers will pay.
      - willnonya 4y ago
        I think youre missing several inputs into your feedback loop. The original statement about the US system bearing the brunt of development stands. It's also true that insurers influence the market. Both are true. There are also government inputs into the market, political inputs a d supply chain elements that all feed into this. The one stakeholder will little real input in the end consumer who gets stuck paying whatever the others have decided they'll allow...
        kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
        That doesn't explain the behavior of off-patent drugs being jacked up in price on a whim or near identical variants being made to extend patent protection and maintain the predatory pricing of the name brand. Their development costs are already recouped during the initial patent phase. Tweaking things a little doesn't cost them nearly as much.
- lzaaz 4y ago
  This is fair. OTOH, you have the single European market (the EU forces games, apps, hardware, etc to be sold at the same price everywhere in the EU in practical terms), which has shafted poor countries-it's disgraceful that a Swedish costumer pays the same price for an iPhone than a Portuguese costumer while making several times as much money every month.
  - decadancer 4y ago
    That's kinda messed up. ALL hardware?
    - sofixa 4y ago
      No, they're mistaken, there is no such thing.
    - argsnd 4y ago
      It’s not true. That guy doesn’t really know what he’s talking about.
  - sofixa 4y ago
    > OTOH, you have the single European market (the EU forces games, apps, hardware, etc to be sold at the same price everywhere in the EU in practical terms), That's not true, where are you imagining this from? Hardware certainly doesn't cost the same, at the very least there are different VAT levels, but also pricing is adapted to the local market (literally just checked, i can get an Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 for 300€ less in Bulgaria compared to France). Software I'm unsure how to check, but Netflix costs varies by county.
    - lzaaz 4y ago
      You can buy it directly from Bulgaria to save 300€ then. It would be illegal for the shop to tell you you have to pay more for buying from another country. >Software I'm unsure how to check, but Netflix costs varies by county. If it does (I don't think so, the minimal differences are because of VAT) you can subscribe from another European country (using a VPN or whatever) and Netflix can't ban you or block you from using it (like they would if you bought the subscription from a third world country for example) Is it fair that both Finland and Italy pay 7.99€/month for the basic plan? (This is why I said "in practical terms")
- klodolph 4y ago
  From what I understand, the Russian market has a lot of tech-savvy users but disposable income is lower. If you didn’t price your app for the Russian market, it was more likely to get pirated or cloned. Similar caveats in certain parts of eastern Europe. At least, that was the justification I’ve heard. Different story in places like Africa, where you often make a completely different app to contend with things like data caps and slow networks (e.g. Facebook Lite).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
sushid 4y ago
It kind of does, no? Would you want your recurring charge to fluctuate randomly just because the developer converts everything to their currency? Or what about getting screwed over and being charged an exorbitant price because you live in a poorer country and the developer wasn't considerate enough to add regional pricing based on your PPP? You'd have to use a third party to remedy this but Apple handles it for you.
Waterluvian 4y ago
Indeed. It’s a very smart thing to do. Basically a Big Mac index approach.
eftychis 4y ago
Disagree on that. Is Apple trying to arbitrage currencies at this point?
- selectodude 4y ago
  Not explicitly but part of their 30 percent cut is handling currency risk, yes.
jorblumesea 4y ago
It's a decision that actually benefits the customer and developer enormously. Imo an "apple thing to do" is to change chargers simply to make a profit. Apple handling price/international conversions and currency fluctuations seems immensely useful.

hackernewds 4y ago

I find it hard to agree with > developers manually specify prices for each region, which wouldn't really scale for a lot of developers while this also is more aligned to Apple's goals, unless there's also a proven and generalized (geographically and at all price points, app types) observation where the price looking beautiful as 0.99 massively offsets the actual revenue gains of being 1.23. > "ugly" prices in other regions (no x.00 or x.99 pricing), unless they had some rounding scheme to make them look nicer,

darth_avocado 4y ago

Not to be that guy, but isn’t that like, what computers are for?

crystaln 4y ago
Knowing that Apple is pretty smart, I'm sure they use computers, but only update occasionally so prices aren't constantly fluctuating. Apple loves design and beauty. Crisp numbers and stability are more user friendly and aesthetic.
- darth_avocado 4y ago
  Knowing apple, more likely scenario is that the systems are old and allowing such flexibility would be a Herculean task that needs a lot of investment with not a lot of upside. TLDR; if it works don’t touch it.

hitpointdrew 4y ago

You would think a company like Apple could easily build a system that updated exchange rates daily and could do the simple math on any price. Having "price points" seems arbitrarily and stupid.

simonw 4y ago
They could do that, but then users in some countries would have to pay 0.693 of their local currency or whatever. Why should the US be the only country that gets friendly looking prices?
- bmicraft 4y ago
  Or just let the dev specify if they want to round prices to some precision?
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  I'm an American. I routinely buy things in GBP, EUR, and JPY and the amounts convert to an arbitrary number in USD. So what? It is displayed to me as 9.99 EUR. I understand I'm not going to have a nice, pretty .99 at the end of my credit card transaction.
  - gumby 4y ago
    Yes, but you don't know that in the App store: you're buying from your "local" store regardless of where the developer is.
  - simonw 4y ago
    I would expect that the vast majority of human beings very rarely buy anything in a currency other than that of their own country.
- jw1224 4y ago
  The point is that price points already are friendly-looking in every country. Price points are adjusted in each country, they’re not a 1:1 match with $USD.

slg 4y ago

>but lead to "ugly" prices in other regions Isn't this change an introduction of those ugly prices? If I'm reading the new rules correctly, Apple now supports prices like 7.39 or 37.40. I guess they don't end in a 1-4 or 6-8, but they aren't the cleanest numbers either. And if that last digit is really the problem, rounding to the nearest 5 is always a possibility.

mynameisvlad 4y ago
7.39 should be possible as part of the 10c price step, but how would you get 37.40 out of the system? You could do 37.00, 37.90, 37.95, or 37.99 via the "X." ones, and the first category would all end in X9.
- slg 4y ago
  They say .50 price steps are possible in the 10-50 range so X.90 + .50.
  - mynameisvlad 4y ago
    So the way I read it is as two separate systems: Developers can go in 10c price steps from $0.29 to $9.99 (0.39, 0.49, 0.59, etc), or in 50c price steps from $0.49 to $49.99 (0.49, 0.99, 1.49, 1.99, etc), etc OR developers can use the 4 supported conventions for any price in those ranges, as long as you fit within the convention. But you cannot start at a supported convention and then use the price steps.

pavon 4y ago

Thanks for that explanation. Is that why the price point ranges overlap - does the increment you select tell Apple how much they should round by when converting currency? For example, on the surface it seems redundant to have overlapping prices bands $0.29-$9.99 in $0.10 increments $0.49-$49.99 in $0.50 increments Since 10 cent increments include 50 cent increments, so why not say: $0.29-$9.99 in $0.10 increments $9.99-$49.99 in $0.50 increments

willnonya 4y ago
"does the increment you select tell Apple how much they should round by when converting currency?" Not in anyway beyond simple math...thisnwhole scheme likely has more to do with ensuring and determining commissions that anything else.

willnonya 4y ago

The alternative would be to have developers set their price point and currency then allow Apple to still do the international conversion rates. There is zero benefit in these conversions to only having preset price points. Your answer may be factually true but it is logically flawed. Unless there is some marketing value here I suspect it has more to do with making sure they don't lose a half cent of commission rather than benefiting anyone else in any real way.

stjohnswarts 4y ago

Since you seem to know a bit can you set which countries/regions have access say something like "only north america and Africa" ? Not an apple dev so I don't have a clue.

WA 4y ago
Yes. You can include or exclude regions and individual countries. Another interesting thing: Apple’s price tiers are anchored to the US dollar. Even though I am a German developer, selling only to German speaking people in the EU, I have to adjust my price tier if the USD/EUR exchange rate is changed by Apple. They check for this roughly once per quarter.

ngcc_hk 4y ago

Apple did its best to reduce the pain points. Sometimes by adding more like butterfly if they goes off course. But it is all about user or developer experience. Just not always on it. Intent is different from result. Here seems make some sense.

somedude895 4y ago

This blows my mind, I never thought about that. I imagine automatic currency conversion would make it especially hard for any company outside US/EU. They'd stick out like a sore thumb with their weird prices.

makeitdouble 4y ago
There are also adjustment for the general price of things in the country. e.g. a 1USD price straight converted to the currency could be too high in a weak economy, so the actual price would be set at 0.7 or 0.5 usd
xwolfi 4y ago
The USD/EUR exchange rate varies as widely, if not more, than the USD/JPY, price points ensure a sort of strategic pricing in each region.

WA 4y ago

No. The alternative would be a button "apply current exchange rates to all prices" and an additional input field where you can override this price per country. This is how Amazon does it for Kindle self-publishing.

ChrisRR 4y ago

Of course that's the very Apple approach. Why not give them the option of using their automatic price adjustments rather than making people use it?