[simonh]

> ...Apple’s price increase is greater than the pound’s loss in value...

It's 5% more than the pound's loss in value next to the Dollar. But bear in mind that for the last 6 months Apple has simply swallowed a 20% reduction in their (and developers) UK App Store revenue. Look at it that way and we in the UK have enjoyed subsidized prices for most of the last year.

[ensignavenger]

Do app developers get to set their own prices for foreign app stores? Or are the prices automatically and uncontrollably set by Apple, based on US app store prices?

[Humdeee]

Apple does pricing in tiers. Tier 0 (free) to tier 87 ($1000 USD). You choose a tier which correlates to a fixed price from a drop down menu. These tiers are converted to a localized price through all the stores. The same works for in-app purchases.

Eg: Tier 87 is automatically $1399 CAD, as long as you allow that app to be available in the Canada App Store.

[ensignavenger]

Thanks- Can a developer select one tier for the US and another tier for a different country?

[Humdeee]

Not with the sale price of the app at least. Just like there is a review process for the app, there is also a separate review process for in-app purchases. 1 tier across all countries for each in-app purchase and the initial sale price.

Now, with that being said, I have not seen an instance of a developer or seller abusing the localization API for this purpose... meaning forcibly charging other stores for the same in-app purchase content. A separate in-app purchase would have to be made in any case for other stores to route to. Apple has a pretty firm fist and I imagine location abuse like this may lead to the seller's account being banned or punished. It may be perfectly allowed however, I haven't dug too deep into the TOS.

[ensignavenger]

I'm not sure I understand your post? I was thinking along the lines of a developer picking a different tier for one territory over another because they disagreed with Apple's default pricing. Maybe they don't like the exchange rate, or they have unique localization costs associated with one territory, or they have additional licensing costs for one market over others. I wasn't really thinking about in-app purchases.

[Humdeee]

In that case no, you cannot set multiple tiers over multiple territories for the price of an app. There's no override for Apples default "1 tier fits all" pricing system as far as I know.

[systoll]

They're set automatically; but they can be varied manually.

[spuz]

If that's true it would suggest that Apple are not in fact basing their price on expected further devaluations of the pound vs the dollar. So either they don't expect the price to fall further, or they do expect it to fall further but don't want to burden their UK customers with even higher prices at the moment.

[simonh]

Or they are aligning their prices against a psychologically meaningful breakpoint such as the increase from £7.99 to £9.99 given in the article, which happens to be about 25%, rather than a precisely 20% increase which would yield a price of £9.59.

People here are reading way more into that 5% than is remotely warranted and for ludicrously incidental reasons. What's actually happening here is very simple. Apple has been taking a hit for a while. They are re-aligning prices to the nearest logical breakpoint. That's it. All that analyst guff about Brexit downside risks because of a slight percentage discrepancy with exchange rates is just because analysts don't know crap about the real reason - marketing.

[tlrobinson]

Uh 25% increase only leads to round prices at certain points. 25% increase on £1 is £1.25...

Otherwise I agree with you.

[simonh]

They increased the basic price 'unit' from £0.79 to £0.99. Although at higher price points they use a 'unit' of £1.49 that's now changed to £1.99.

Apple uses prices aligned to multiples of these units, with some rounding. So when Apple realigns UK prices to take into account currency fluctuations, they do so based on a combination of how much and how long the exchange rate has changed, and what their target price units and price points are. Also I'm sure they factor in holiday season timing to e.g. avoid negative publicity running up to Christmas.