Yup. And the problem now is if its not free, your product is not going to get ANY users. I really hope, everyone starts rolling back on freemium, because its hurting everyone (except customers).
I would argue that it hurts customers too, at least for some apps. If a developer doesn't get constant revenue there'd be little incentive or resources to update and maintain the app.
The customers are then stuck with an app that might have been good but decays over time.
Until the next cool freemium app in that space comes out, then the customer just switches to that one.
The real problem is that we just don't need 80 gazillion apps. The "app" market is extremely competitive, that's really what people are complaining about, profits have been driven down to basically nothing. Normally you would expect some developers to drop out of the market, which would help the situation, but two things are stopping that from happening, in my opinion.
First, the platform companies (Apple and Google) have been incredibly successful at promoting app development as a gold mine. For every developer who gets sick of it and moves on to something else, two people become "app developers".
Second, there's a startup bubble and the wisdom out there says you need an app or your startup is nothing. This partly relates to the first point, the hype around "apps", even years after Apple launched the app store, is deafening.
I believe Apple does do this - it's $99/year to become an Apple Developer, and I think you need to be an Apple Developer to have an app in the app store.
It is $99/year to have apps in the App Store, but it is per developer account and not per app.
I almost think devs would be better off if it was per app. At least any devs planning to make a living off the store. It would cut down on a lot of the crappy spammy apps out there.
It would also kill the one-off hobby stuff with which many, especially teens, get their taste for (app) development, which would be a high price to pay. Without a secondary path to distribute apps I think it would be a bad idea.
I do believe many companies are employing this practice with freemium apps. There is something bigger happening here with freemium. At first we all called it "race to the bottom" pricing. And if felt like that. If felt like the value of our apps were dwindling to stay competitive.
But let's just look at how things were for a second. If you sold an app for 4.99 you making a promise to the consumer that you would deliver value equal or greater than your price. And you if you didn't keep that promise it was up to the consumer to get a refund or suck it up. This was largely a pre-internet thing. The internet has made distribution a non-issue. Now you can get your products and ideas out there for little to no cost.
What we are seeing is an opportunity to show initial value to our users and offer higher value at a premium. This increases the reach of our work and helps us to find those 1000 true fans. Of course, we have to nurture those relationships. It's a lot of work.
I don't think there is anything wrong with premium pricing. People are use to it still. Why aren't we just focusing on the value we bring to people and whether it's premium or freemium none of it would be an issue.
Freemium can mean several things. I've purchased several apps (and generally paid more for them) when there was a free download that offers some functionality and the option to pay for the full version. Sometimes these are games where the first chapter is free and then you pay $5 for the full game after you've played a bit. It lowers the "friction" for the customer because you get to try something out at no cost but if you enjoy the first hour of play, you're more confident that you'll enjoy the other 5 hours.
Other times these are utilities. The Philips Hue lamps have an official app that's passable but the third party "Hue Pro" adds functionality. The free version does basically what the Phiilps app does or you can pay $2 and unlock all of the "fun" addons like music sync and lava lamp mode. Once I know that the app works and isn't buggy, I'm glad to pay. Same for launchers like Nova. Free version is a nice launcher that I vastly prefer to the stock launcher but I can pay a few bucks and get several more options. I probably wouldn't have paid $3 times 4 or 5 launchers just to find the one I liked but once I tried all of the free versions, I paid for the full version of the one I liked best.
It's like shareware. With the glut of options, you don't want to pay every time you try several solutions to find the best one so you try a bunch then buy the best. If I had to pay $1-10 to try every app on my phone, I'd just install less apps (or, to be honest, I'd probably try cracked copies to find the best option, then buy the best one).
As long as the quality of mobile apps is so varied, it really is hard to convince potential customers to pay any amount of money sight unseen. I've installed so many iOS and Android apps that lasted a total of 10 minutes on my devices it's not even funny. If I paid even $1 for each of them to learn those lessons, it would've turned me off to buying mobile apps at all.
Hmm.. which all are?
Its hardly even a choice. As a consumer myself, anything not free doesn't interest me anymore. Companies are spoiling consumers (including me) silly.
I'm not sure freemium games with in-app purchases are a very good model for apps in general (I'm not saying you're suggesting anything other than that they make a lot of money, just pointing it out in the context of this discussion).
It's hard for me to see how they're anything but a form of unregulated (yet) gambling/exploitation of people vulnerable to gambling.
Who in their right minds think that tens, hundreds of dollars is a good price to pay for virtual gemstones?
At any rate, for others that where unfamiliar with Supercell, I'm assuming parent means the makers of:
The customers are then stuck with an app that might have been good but decays over time.