Another $1K App on the App Store • Hacker News Board

Re: Another $1K App on the App Store

#11

Post by blhack » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 4:29 PM UTC

spinlock wrote: post #5

fnayr wrote: post #2

That's fine. If they lower their price quickly back to $.99 Apple can ban them (and has stated they will ban developers engaging in blatant price manipulations). If they don't, no one will buy it, and if some poor schmuck does he will get a refund on an accidental purchase.

Why would apple want to ban people from dropping the price of an app from $999 to $0.99? Are they just trying to make sure that people who buy at high prices don't feel bad about their purchases?

Because raising it to $999 temporarily is just a cheap, and obnoxious, way of getting free marketing.

It's trying to game the app store.

Re: Another $1K App on the App Store

#12

Post by fnayr » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 4:30 PM UTC

bkanber wrote: post #6

I don't understand -- why would they do this? Trying to trick someone into dropping $1k on their app? Or is there some way you can game the app store by messing with prices?

They do it so that when they lower the price to $.99 3 days later, the robots pick up on the 10000% lower price.

Re: Another $1K App on the App Store

#13

Post by fnayr » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 4:30 PM UTC

igorgue wrote: post #10

When price changes from say free to 1K and people have to update do you have to pay for the update?

No

Re: Another $1K App on the App Store

#14

Post by wahnfrieden » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 4:30 PM UTC

spinlock wrote: post #5

fnayr wrote: post #2

That's fine. If they lower their price quickly back to $.99 Apple can ban them (and has stated they will ban developers engaging in blatant price manipulations). If they don't, no one will buy it, and if some poor schmuck does he will get a refund on an accidental purchase.

Why would apple want to ban people from dropping the price of an app from $999 to $0.99? Are they just trying to make sure that people who buy at high prices don't feel bad about their purchases?

Why would you want your customers to feel cheated? It also leads to more refund requests, which have a processing overhead.

Re: Another $1K App on the App Store

#15

Post by fnayr » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 4:31 PM UTC

nayefc wrote: post #4

fnayr wrote: post #2

That's fine. If they lower their price quickly back to $.99 Apple can ban them (and has stated they will ban developers engaging in blatant price manipulations). If they don't, no one will buy it, and if some poor schmuck does he will get a refund on an accidental purchase.

Looking at previous pricing points though, it seems they changed their prices rapidly up and down. Isn't this blatant price manipulation? They're not banned yet.

Yeah sometimes Apple doesn't catch them all. But they have banned developers in the past for this. If someone reports them, they have a high chance of getting banned.

Re: Another $1K App on the App Store

#16

Post by chrisjack » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 4:33 PM UTC

It seem to be a good way to have free marketing. They will probably drop it back tomorow to free or 0.99$

Re: Another $1K App on the App Store

#17

Post by LinaLauneBaer » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 4:33 PM UTC

coderholic wrote: post #9

My guess is that is to manipulate all of the app discount sites that scan the app store and report on apps that have recently been discounted. If the developers drop the app to $0.99 then all of those sites will report this as a huge saving, and possibly feature it more prominently as a result (I'm assuming those sites are all automated - and there are a lot of them!)

I am the developer of one of those "discount sites". Well I do not have a site but apps for iOS and OS X that show you the discounts. I filter those things out on the server side in extreme cases and my Mac app allows you to specify your own filter criteria like in iTunes where you can have smart playlists. So for example you could ignore apps where the old price is $999 and the new price is $0.99 or something like that.

http://store-news-app.com/

Re: Another $1K App on the App Store

#18

Post by S4M » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 4:41 PM UTC

fnayr wrote: post #2

That's fine. If they lower their price quickly back to $.99 Apple can ban them (and has stated they will ban developers engaging in blatant price manipulations). If they don't, no one will buy it, and if some poor schmuck does he will get a refund on an accidental purchase.

That's weird, if I wanted to manipulate the price to make it look like my $0.99 are a bargain, I wouldn't set the initial price at $999, as it will become obvious, but at something like $5.

Re: Another $1K App on the App Store

#19

Post by randomdata » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 4:43 PM UTC

bkanber wrote: post #6

I don't understand -- why would they do this? Trying to trick someone into dropping $1k on their app? Or is there some way you can game the app store by messing with prices?

Maybe people really do want to buy the app for $1K? There is no way to know until you test the market.

Re: Another $1K App on the App Store

#20

Post by ja27 » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 4:45 PM UTC

If you have an AppAnnie account you can see the grossing ranks. Looks like someone in India bought a copy. It's the #6 best-grossing iPhone/iPod app in India right now. It also peaked at #21 in Malaysia on the 29th. So it looks like 2 sales at that price.

http://www.appannie.com/app/ios/519800737/ranking/#view=gros...