Apple benefits from the overall low prices in the App Store. It's easier to get someone to buy fifteen $2 apps than it is two $15 apps. Cheap apps are fun. It keeps your investment constantly fresh with new stuff. A vibrant, inexpensive App Store enhances Apple's platform and, I believe, makes the total revenue pie bigger.
Not allowing returns helps keep the prices down. Consumers would be willing to pay more if the risk of a bad purchase was reduced. It seems not to make sense that Apple would want lower prices. Higher prices means their 30% cut is higher. But Apple is interested in the big picture and is motivated to keep prices low as part of an overall strategy. In the aggregate, this benefits everyone. It doesn't feel like it as an individual developer or customer but it contributes to an efficient market with more products and more innovation.
What do you think? Am I giving too much credit (or blame) to Apple for pulling the levers behind the curtain?
Problem with Apple's approach is that now I have to spend $10 on 5 $1.99 apps to decide which one to use. I'd rather try an unlimited number of $9.99 apps to decide which to keep. Why do I care if I spend $10 either way?
ReplyDeleteIMO, if a single developer can sell at $10 then it's likely to be a MUCH better/deeper/more creative app. As a side benefit, the truly crummy apps will die on the vine because they won't have any revenue.
I think Apple is making a mistake. A large selection on apps is good. Too many apps (the current situation) makes it hard to find the quality apps. At some point I just give up looking.
The $.99 "crap-app" market in the App store has lowered the standards and quality of the apps as a whole. For example, a developer spends 2-4 hours using their flash-style programming mentality and then upload a useless fart app. People then go "LOL, well, it's only $.99, I'll buy it for a LOL" The app becomes popular. Pretty soon, the easy money guys out there are ripping it off and there are now 10 $.99 fart apps. Guess that means you just have to spend (waste) $10 testing to find out which one is best (worst?). To that end, the users end up promoting bad developers trying to make a quick $.99 (minus Apple's fees).
ReplyDeleteThis leads directly to piracy. Instead of wasting money on crap-apps, it becomes easier to set up your iDevice to pirate all of those apps at once and "try them out." Whether it's a $.99 crap app or a $500 webcam monitoring app. The problem is, when it's this easy, even if you get use out of the app, what's to entice you to pay for it after evaluating it?
So how about a better solution? Let the developers opt-into allowing an evaluation period. This could be either time limited and the app disables itself or a money back period. It would promote the good app developers who are willing to stand behind their apps with a "sure, you might pay more for this app, but I'm willing to bet you're going to keep it." It would also curb piracy (at least from an evaluation standpoint). I'd very much like to see some sort of evaluation or money back period
The problem with an evaluation period is that it would expose the crap apps and developers for what they are. Apple probably doesn't want that, the crappy developers sure wouldn't want that. But it's a moot point, because when was the last time Apple listened to its customers or developers?