Today Apple announced to developers that you can now do In App Purchases from within free apps. Apple’s previous mantra was that free apps always remain free. This change is huge! Here are some of the implications for you as a developer.
Anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that In App Purchases have not been a great success. Customers are not accustomed to paying from within an app, especially when they have already paid something for the app. With this change Apple will start encouraging the behavior that you download something from the App Store for free and if you like it, it’s easy to pay for an upgrade or more content. I think that will go a long way towards removing the psychological barrier against In App Purchase.
New Apps
If you were planning to create a lite and a paid version of the app it seems smarter today to make use of In App Purchase to enable the paid features of the app. Now this is not as easy as having #ifdef preprocessor switches and building two different executables. So Apple’s claim that you can “simplify your development” is a little bit disingenuous. In a subsequent post on my iPhone Development Blog I will go into more detail on how you can go about using In App Purchase to enable premium features in your app.
Existing Apps
If you sell an app where the customer can purchase additional content, e.g. an ebook reader or a comic book reader, it’s a no-brainer to now lower your price from $0.99 to free (if the $0.99 price was only there to enable In App Purchases). I’ve already seen at least one app on the App Store that has done this.
If your app is free app on the App Store, without a corresponding paid version, then you can now add In App Purchase to to your app. For example, ask you customers to pay $0.99 to get rid of the ads. All your current customers will be able to download your update for free. They can continue to use the app for free, and a few of them may take the upsell.
If your app is currently on the App Store and you charge a fee for it, with or without a corresponding lite version, then your options are not as clear.
If you make your paid app free with In App Purchase for premium features, then your current customers will suddenly lose features they have already paid for. There are several ideas being proposed in the developer forums for ways to get around this problem. But none seem to apply to all circumstances and scenarios. So unless Apple provides an official upgrade solution, this seems to be an iffy approach.
So what’s the solution? Create a new app and make it free with In App Purchase? The problem with this approach is that you then have maintain the new app as well as the old paid app. Both apps will be competing for downloads and spots on the top seller lists. And we’re still cluttering up the App Store with two apps instead of one. Hopefully Apple will dazzle us with a brilliant solution soon.
Other Considerations
Before you jump on this new opportunity you should consider some of these issues:
- If you make changes to your apps, how will that affect your current ranking on the App Store top lists?
- In App Purchase only works on 3.0 and later. If a large percentage of your customers are still on 2.x, then they will not be able to use In App Purchase to upgrade their apps. Furthermore, In App Purchase on an iPod Touch requires that the device is connected to a WiFi network.
- Apple also claims that “Using In App Purchase in your app can also help combat some of the problems of software piracy by allowing you to verify In App Purchases.” How can you benefit from this? Stay tuned for a follow-up post.
Some Unanswered Questions
- What will happen to the free vs. paid top app lists? It seems natural to assume that if you make your app free, then it will from that point on compete on the top free list, and you would lose your current spot on the top paid list. But this is just my assumption. Keep in mind that the number of downloads required for a top spot on the free app list vs. the paid list is orders of magnitude different. So if you’re moving from paid to free, then you have some catching up to do.
- Are In App Purchases included in the calculation for the Top Grossing list? (Do customers really care about the Top Grossing list, or is it just a feel-good list for developers?) Maybe this whole In App Purchase change is the first step towards combining the three top lists into one?
- For odd psychological reasons, reviews of free apps are often more harsh and less generous with stars than reviews for paid apps. (This is one reason why we don’t recommend to make your app temporarily free during a promotion. Your rating average will take a beating.) So if your app is free to begin with and you rely on In App Purchase for upgrades, then presumably reviews for the “free” and “paid” portions of the app will be intermingled.
- Will there be promo codes available for In App Purchases? If not, how are developers going to send full versions of their apps to reviewers? Do we have to regress to AdHoc builds?
