Comments on: State of the Apps: PCalc Hits 1.2, Dirty Tactics, and a Warning to Developers: Charge More for Apps!

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:54:42 +0000

Perhaps a slight bit off topic, but if an app is ugly, I'll always choose it's lesser-functional competitor (or nothing at all) instead. The iPhone is a sleek, beautiful device. I refuse to have ghetto-looking icons and UIs on it.

Apple should require that all apps provide a choice of skins in the settings - Apple's UI, or the developer's UI.

Developers, take a look at BeejiveIM! I would glady have paid over $20 for it.

By: Abhishek

Abhishek — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:24:07 +0000

It’s the wait and see game isn’t it? I bought air share on itunes for $10 and now a competing if not better app (discover) is out there for free. So now I’m careful about what I buy and instead scour itunes everyday for apps that are free and useful. So if you price stuff at $10, you just may price yourself out of a sale. I agree with Striatic – don’t think that a single app is going to feed you for a year. Build mutiple apps and price them cheap but focus on quantity of sales. If not, some developer out there is going to replicate your app and sell it for free…then you’re scre***.

By: icewing

icewing — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 22:48:37 +0000

I wouldn’t have a problem paying $10 or more for a decent app, but I can’t make that determination by a few screen shots on the app store. What users need is the ability to have a 15 or 30 day demo of the app, to see if it fits our needs and whether we like it. I think that this would increase sales, especially those of higher-priced apps.

By: striatic

striatic — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:14:01 +0000

... or base the price on star rating. start low. as your star rating goes up, charge more. don't be afraid to charge more.

while i agree that apps in general should cost a bit more, charging for your application based on what it would take you to live in a wheat field in iowa is overly simplistic.

By: striatic

striatic — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:08:11 +0000

“How to Price Your iPhone App Out of Existence“ is a dumb post.

not all developers need to sustain themselves for an entire year off a single app, since many apps simply don't take that long to develop.

the post is based on the assumption that consumers will suck it up and pay more for iphone apps, and i'm telling you right now that most will not.

you should price your application based on frequency and importance of use. if an app is important to the purchaser, and they think they'll use it frequently, they'll pay more .. but they won't pay more for an app just because the developer wants to make a living off of it.

make a quality app that i'll use every day? sure, i'll pay 10 dollars for it, maybe even 15. every week? i'll pay 5. but if you're going to charge 10 dollars for an app i'll use or play only a handful of times there's no way i'll pay, even if you want to live off the app for a year.

By: Mike M

Mike M — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:04:12 +0000

I gotta point out here that it’s still early for the app store. I really like the fact that we have all this competition between .99 apps and such. It helps weed out the bad developers and shows new developers what the people want. There’s nothing worse than paying $5 or $6 for an app made by someone who obviously has never used an iPhone before and it shows in their ui.

By: Glenn

Glenn — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:43:53 +0000

I 100% agree with christophers first comment it’s those in between apps that are someetimes far inferior to .99 cent applications but charging higher prices for amazing quality games is no problem but the time and process that goes in too making a psp game and these new high price games should be the same. If someone pays 20 dollars for a game it better have had a lot of time and thought put in to it to ensure the customer/gamer satisfaction.

By: roamingrican

roamingrican — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:25:41 +0000

what really sucks the life out of the $.99 developers is the massive existance of free apps that largely duplicate the pool of $.99 apps I think the article is right, if a developer were to spend some more time to create an appleesque ui with no bugs the first time and call it say $5 or add more quality content and call it $10 the app has more of a chance of survival. Let’s face it we’re in a recession (us) but we can still afford to blow $10 now and again.

By: Keil Miller

Keil Miller — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:20:40 +0000

I payed $15 for beejive and did so without question. But for me to buy an app; it needs to have all the quirks covered. A native and easy ui, and not forgetting to integrate sound controls. Nothing pissed me off more than an app I payed $6 for and I hear music playing when my phone is switched to silent. I’ll pay for an app, but developers have to make it worth it.

By: Christopher Vitek

Christopher Vitek — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:12:10 +0000

Charging $10 to $20 for high quality apps is not a problem. Nor is the $.99 “quickie app” that people can put out to fill scratch an itch. IMO, the biggest issue comes from the in-between apps – ones that cost $2.99 or $3.99, especially when they are closer in quality to the $.99 apps.