Rip Off Britain, the UK App Store price hikes

Yesterday Apple adjusted the prices of its apps in the UK App Store, siting exchange rates and VAT increase, as the reason. Whilst an increase in $1 apps from 59p to 69p is unlikely to deter many people from buying, developers charging the higher rates, may see an initial dip in sales, as apps priced at $2 go from costing £1.19 to £1.49, with the increase growing for each pricing tear. If you're not from the UK, you may wonder why the price increase may affects UK sales, and well it's pretty much like this. Increasing an app from 59p to 69p is negligible, and physiologically is still less than a pound, about the same price as a bar of chocolate, and so is kind off throw away money, meaning if you buy a duff [low-res] app, it's not such a big deal having to delete it. An app priced at £1.19 used to be seen as costing almost a pound, and so that magic pound figure remained, but the new price will be seen as being significantly more than a pound, and as such will affect impulse buys, making people stop and think do I really want/need this app, with apps priced at the higher rates again, suffer even more.

In retail, setting price points has always been tricky, and this is especially so in the UK, but only time will tell, if, or how much developers will suffer as a result of these App Store price changes.

Comments

[Alex]

So basically if you are from UK, but with USA App Store account you will pay less for the same app, than you would pay with UK account?

[Glyn Evans]

@Alex, yes, but not many people have US iTunes accounts. If an app is good, then the dev will probably be OK, but if it's poor and/or the dev has not disclose things like low-res in the apps description, then be prepared for Apple to be paying out refunds on the devs behalf. This will be based on the UK sales of goods act, which I have invoked a number of times, and got a full refund every time.

There is another risk that I have not mentioned above, and that is some devs may choose not to publish their app in the UK App Store, which would be disastrous for UK iPhoneographers!!

[Ridwan Jaafar]

I totally agree with Glyn. I don't mind buying a 69p app. But, the price hike from £1.19 to £1.49 is ludicrous. This is will surely make me think twice or thrice before I hit the "Buy Now" button.

Bottomline: With this sort of price plan, Sales dip is imminent!!!

[Steve]

Things have gone the other way down here in Australia - we have just seen our $1.19 apps drop down to $0.99 and our $2.49 apps down to $1.99 (and so on) and it was long overdue - The aussie dollar reached parity with the USD many months ago so this shift has been a long time coming for us.

[Bob Beamon]

Bottom line the British currency is even more worthless than the U.S. dollar. In Japan, we finally got some relief with a $.99 app going from 115 yen to 85 yen. Good deal.

[James Moore]

It will probably have a small degree of initial impact; but I doubt developers will really feel it - especially at the Tier 1 price level of 59/69p

By far and away - the largest market unsurprisingly is the US App Store. That's where the meat of sales (well for me anyways) is done...

[Huw]

Yes, I agree with Glyn that the new UK pricing will be hard to swallow – especially the 25% price jump from £1.19 to £1.49 – with prices jumping beyond the "give it a go" level. And without any way of test-driving the apps, buying becomes harder to justify.

But iTunes international pricing is still a mystery ...

Take three apps at different price points (£1.99, £2.49, £2.99) compared in iTunes Stores in UK, Australia and Japan (the three countries so far featured in the comments here), then converted into dollars at x-rates.com to give the US dollar price equivalents for the prices charged in the three countries (US price for comparison):

Bento: $4.82 in UK, $5.95 in Aus, $5.69 in Japan, $4.99 in US
AppCreator: $3.20 in UK, $3.21 in Aus, $3.16 in Japan, $2.99 in US
iKoyomi2: $4.01 in UK, $4.83 in Aus, $4.42 in Japan, $3.99 in US

Even with the Australian price drops, they seem to be paying the highest prices - a whole dollar more for Bento?!

[Richard Bailey]

I think some folk will just jailbreak their phones and download their chosen apps for nothing from torrents and newsfeeds. Price rises like this can be counter productive and Apple needs to know this before devs and themselves get ripped off in return by piracy.

[Richard Bailey]

@Alex
How do you set up a US account?
Richard

[Gordon Fraser]

you can set up a us store account by purchasing an itunes gift voucher (in us dollars from a reputable seller) then you create account using a made up US address ( use google to find real mail address for a us company perhaps....) and DO NOT put in your credit card details. You credit the account using the gift card and you must continue to credit the account using a gift card.

[Richard Bailey]

Thanks Gordon I'll give it a try once I've found somewhere to purchase from.