I've been perusing the App store quite a bit since yesterday. I've been very curious on how prices were going to be.  Apple has been really going after the ease of development if you already develop for a Mac. This means they've basically been targeting desktop developers.  However, mobile developers have flocked to it, as well, since it's yet another mobile market. So, I've been wondering if the prices would trend towards mobile pricing more like on BREW (think Verizon or Alltel),  desktop pricing, or some mid-ground like you'll find on a Windows Mobile device. Assuming there was going to be no recurring billing like available on all other mobile platforms, I was thinking things would be a bit more expensive.

It appears that it's all over the board. Pricing also doesn't appear to be affecting sales, either. Although the data appears to be unavailable now, I noted yesterday that in the case of five different Sudoku games, the most expensive at $6 had about 3 times as many downloads as the two at $3, but those had around the same amount of downloads as the two that were at $1.  Strangely, though, the more expensive one wasn't even rated as well. (TechCrunch has an article with the top 50 from yesterday in spreadsheet form. Great data.)

The top downloaded game was SEGA's Super Monkey Ball. At $10, it's priced pretty normally for a small, mobile game on other handsets. However, it's also been demonstrated at multiple Apple events, so that should come as no surprise.  Additionally, it's a brand name game from a big company that can market it on their own, too.

Big names tend to always do well.  For instances, the MLB.com app is sitting in the number two spot. However, free will always win. Apple has made two top 25 lists to account for this. Otherwise, Apples own Remote and apps from the likes of Google, AOL (they've got two in the top 10 of free apps), and Facebook would completely overshadow any paid apps.

A big remaining question, though, is how quickly will equilibrium be reached and the proper pricing appear? And will large company apps that are basically marketing for their services, ad supported applications, and simply free apps ultimately dominate certain categories? For instance, why would anyway try to sell a streaming radio application when both Pandora and AOL Radio are available for free?  Will the apps in the $30-50 range actually sell?

What is also interesting to note, however, is that there are ad-supported applications.  This often doesn't exist on other platforms as carriers have specifically disallowed it (except for their own apps, of course). Some applications are even available in both paid form and ad-supported form. For example, Twitterific is available as a $10 app as well as a free, but ad-supported, app.

Anyway, time will tell how this all plays out.  It's only Day 1. Good luck to all. :)

Posted by Shane on July 11, 2008 8:44 AM | Permalink