Tuesday (March 17) Apple released the new iPhone OS 3.0 and new app store pricing models. In this announcement they mentioned how (quoting from the announcement) “free apps remain free” –meaning that if you get a free app there’s no ability for a developer to then ask you to buy something. This is wrong. If you look at the app store now, you see many duplicate applications, take ‘Touch Physics’ and ‘Touch Physics Lite’ (by Gamez 4 Touch)… these apps are identical, except that the ‘Lite’ version doesn’t include all of the levels; ie, it’s a demo. There are many examples of this where a developer is forced to make a different app to give users a trial (not time limited, but functionality or lack of content).
If the new model had been given the context of games, it would make a lot of sense to use a pricing structure so that the user doesn’t have to download a ‘Lite’ version, try it, like it, buy a seperate app-a better model would be that the game is free, but only includes (in this case) six out of fifty levels, then to get the rest would pay in the app, like Apple has already proposed, however as opposed to the “free apps remain free” mantra the developer could download more.
Or take another case, the New York Times, say they, as Apple proposed, had an app with a subscription. The difference between Apple’s and my opinion being that when you download the free app you would have a one-day trial subscription, then to get the subscription you just pay a set amount for a period of time. Again, the difference being that the app is free–you just pay for the content subscription.
The only counter point I can see to my proposal is that Apple would be ‘giving’ bandwidth to the developer for the app download, and therefore losing money should the buyer chose not to subscribe. But this barely makes sense to the bigger picture.