The Art of the App Store: The Business of Apple Development

HOW TO SUCCEED WITH PAID APPS

Paid apps have higher expectations from users than free apps. It's these expectations that make up the paid app mentality, and there's a different mentality for each type of app, both non-premium and premium. This section elaborates on some of the expectations introduced in the section, “Business Reasons Behind Revenue Models,” earlier in this chapter, including a great example that utilizes a lite app with ad support in addition to in-app purchases.

The Paid App Mentality

You wouldn't expect much success by taking any old free app and suddenly deciding to make it paid if it doesn't meet essential niche and customer expectations for its new price point. Therefore, rather than being differentiated only by price point, non-premium and premium paid apps should be defined by a separate mentality, or way of thinking about the expectations involved at a particular price point.

Take a premium app, for example. The amount of dissonance from your actual price point to whether you are offering a truly “premium” app in terms of niche and customer expectations can, in large part, determine its success. This goes for polish, support, content available, in-app purchase options, and so on.

For the purpose of a point of reference, let's establish that non-premium paid apps on iPhone will be anything from $0.99 to $2.99 (with $0.99 being by far the norm), and premium apps will be anything from $3.99 on up. It truly depends on the target device, though. For iPad devices, ...