[soylentcola]

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.