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Apple announces ‘upgrade’ to App Store pricing, adding 700 new price points

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Re: Apple announces ‘upgrade’ to App Store pricing, adding 700 new price points

#361

Post by PeterisP »

black_puppydog wrote: post #87
barumrho wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One reason I'm aware of is for foreign customers who are buying in foreign currencies. As a developer, I don't want to set prices in every currency, so they translate the price grid for me which I found useful.

Shouldn't that work for any price you give them? It's literally a multiplication with a number they pull per-day as the conversion rate. That wouldn't change if the price wasn't one of "their" numbers...

The whole point is that it is not a multiplication with a conversion rate, it's a mapping that is not purely multiplicative, which has coefficients that in some regions may be significantly different than the exchange rate, that provides round numbers and stickiness to them, and avoids temporal fluctuations - prices in regional markets get adjusted when the ratio gets too far off, not with every change in excahnge rate, in order to reduce the frequency of price change.

Re: Apple announces ‘upgrade’ to App Store pricing, adding 700 new price points

#362

Post by xwolfi »

somedude895 wrote: post #359
JonathonW wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple uses price points rather than having developers explicitly specify prices because they're currency-independent: you specify a price point and Apple chooses appropriate prices for each of the ~175 different storefronts where your app could be available. Apple then periodically adjusts the international prices as exchange rates fluctuate, to keep them in parity with the US prices at the same tiers. The alternativ…

This blows my mind, I never thought about that. I imagine automatic currency conversion would make it especially hard for any company outside US/EU. They'd stick out like a sore thumb with their weird prices.

The USD/EUR exchange rate varies as widely, if not more, than the USD/JPY, price points ensure a sort of strategic pricing in each region.

Re: Apple announces ‘upgrade’ to App Store pricing, adding 700 new price points

#363

Post by moonbas3 »

dang wrote: post #165

We changed the URL from https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/12/apple-announces-bigge... to a third party article I just googled. If there's a better third-party article, we can change it again. Yes, HN has the rule "*Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter" ( https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ), but corporate press releases are so awful…

Newsroom post is just better, I don't understand the need for this.

Are you going to verify that the alternative article is accurate and doesn't interpret the official information in a bad way (I mean in general--not saying that about this announcement)?

Re: Apple announces ‘upgrade’ to App Store pricing, adding 700 new price points

#364

Post by makeitdouble »

somedude895 wrote: post #359
JonathonW wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple uses price points rather than having developers explicitly specify prices because they're currency-independent: you specify a price point and Apple chooses appropriate prices for each of the ~175 different storefronts where your app could be available. Apple then periodically adjusts the international prices as exchange rates fluctuate, to keep them in parity with the US prices at the same tiers. The alternativ…

This blows my mind, I never thought about that. I imagine automatic currency conversion would make it especially hard for any company outside US/EU. They'd stick out like a sore thumb with their weird prices.

There are also adjustment for the general price of things in the country.

e.g. a 1USD price straight converted to the currency could be too high in a weak economy, so the actual price would be set at 0.7 or 0.5 usd

Re: Apple announces ‘upgrade’ to App Store pricing, adding 700 new price points

#365

Post by charcircuit »

alexandre_m wrote: post #174
decadancer wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's a bad practice. I'm Russian and Steam games are (were) 1.5x-2x times cheaper for Russia compared to Europe and Americas, even before regional passes. I don't know whether that was responsiblity of devs or storefront, but it seemed quite a fair and profitable practice, because the price point you are willing to pay for a game (or an app) is different for people from different economical and cultur…

The economics of all of that seem sketchy to me. It sounds like the main North American market is subsidizing the apps being produced and sold worldwide. Does the same logic apply for other virtual good such as digital music elsewhere?

>It sounds like the main North American market is subsidizing the apps being produced and sold worldwide.

Yep. Even ad supported apps are subsidized by NA users.

Re: Apple announces ‘upgrade’ to App Store pricing, adding 700 new price points

#366

Post by WA »

JonathonW wrote: post #97
black_puppydog wrote: post #66

So, never having bothered with Apple hard-/software I am a bit confused... A developer can't just set a price for something? But then out of the first 10000 natural numbers, Apple semi-arbitrarily select a set of 900 "known-good" numbers that work well for prices? Like, as if the other numbers are somehow bad prices? If you charge someone $7,43 for something, the ghost of Steve Jobs will start haunting you? That's, l…

Apple uses price points rather than having developers explicitly specify prices because they're currency-independent: you specify a price point and Apple chooses appropriate prices for each of the ~175 different storefronts where your app could be available. Apple then periodically adjusts the international prices as exchange rates fluctuate, to keep them in parity with the US prices at the same tiers. The alternativ…

No. The alternative would be a button "apply current exchange rates to all prices" and an additional input field where you can override this price per country. This is how Amazon does it for Kindle self-publishing.

Re: Apple announces ‘upgrade’ to App Store pricing, adding 700 new price points

#367

Post by WA »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #340
JonathonW wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple uses price points rather than having developers explicitly specify prices because they're currency-independent: you specify a price point and Apple chooses appropriate prices for each of the ~175 different storefronts where your app could be available. Apple then periodically adjusts the international prices as exchange rates fluctuate, to keep them in parity with the US prices at the same tiers. The alternativ…

Since you seem to know a bit can you set which countries/regions have access say something like "only north america and Africa" ? Not an apple dev so I don't have a clue.

Yes. You can include or exclude regions and individual countries.

Another interesting thing: Apple’s price tiers are anchored to the US dollar. Even though I am a German developer, selling only to German speaking people in the EU, I have to adjust my price tier if the USD/EUR exchange rate is changed by Apple. They check for this roughly once per quarter.

Re: Apple announces ‘upgrade’ to App Store pricing, adding 700 new price points

#368

Post by sofixa »

nwiswell wrote: post #331
sofixa wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> OTOH, you have the single European market (the EU forces games, apps, hardware, etc to be sold at the same price everywhere in the EU in practical terms), That's not true, where are you imagining this from? Hardware certainly doesn't cost the same, at the very least there are different VAT levels, but also pricing is adapted to the local market (literally just checked, i can get an Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 for 300€ le…

> i can get an Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 for 300€ less in Bulgaria compared to France This is insane. What prevents grey market arbitrage? Why wouldn't hardware from the country where hardware is cheapest immediately get posted on the local equivalent of eBay in the country where it is most expensive? In any case I had no idea hardware margins were so squishy. For software, yes, profits are maximized by reducing unit pri…

> This is insane. What prevents grey market arbitrage? Why wouldn't hardware from the country where hardware is cheapest immediately get posted on the local equivalent of eBay in the country where it is most expensive?

Few things - mostly support and localisation support (e.g. the keyboard layout is different in iirc literally every European country, and most people want their local layout they know).

Re: Apple announces ‘upgrade’ to App Store pricing, adding 700 new price points

#369

Post by throwaway2037 »

threeseed wrote: post #211
TillE wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes that's one of the key services you get in exchange for 30%. Small companies really don't want to be handling sales tax requirements for every jurisdiction on the entire globe, it's a nightmare. Not to mention fraud, etc.

It's 15% for developers making less then $1m/year. And as Apple demonstrated in Netherlands with the dating apps it is actually cheaper to use them that try to run your own payment system. Especially if you're trying to target a global audience.

You wrote: >

That sounds interesting! Can you share a link?

Re: Apple announces ‘upgrade’ to App Store pricing, adding 700 new price points

#370

Post by jonasdegendt »

ipaddr wrote: post #300
jonasdegendt wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Entire reseller websites (e.g. g2a) of games and software alike have popped up trying to profit from this arbitrage opportunity. You buy games in Russia and an American scoops up the license key for a little more, it’s all automated too nowadays. On the same note, why are Levi’s jeans $100 bucks in Europe, but $40 in the USA? They’re probably coming out of the same Asian factory. Not an economist but different value…

EU and the USA doesn't have free trade in the pants category

Neither does Vietnam (one of the places Levi’s are produced nowadays) and the US, the pants are imported and duties are levied regardless of whether the pants are sold in Europe or the US.

I’m sure sales tax is less in pretty much every US state compared to European countries, but it still doesn’t explain a $60 difference in price. It’s largely different price points based on different locales in accordance with what consumers are willing to shell out for the product.

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