Over the course of its 14-year history, Apple’s App Store prices have only gone one way. Currently, the cheapest paid app the company allows is NZ$1.69, but now Apple has decided to let developers price their apps however optimistically or pessimistically they want with an additional 700 price points.
For Kiwis, that means that you’ll start seeing apps priced as low as 39 cents. App makers can even make their software up to NZ$21,000. Such requests will require you to fill out a form justifying it, though, so let me save you the time: no, your app is not worth NZ$21,000. It just isn’t.
Even with these changes, you still can’t put down any price you like, but it’s significantly more flexible. Apple says that you can adjust your app prices in increments of 10 cents up to NZ$10, and then 50 cents up to NZ$50.
Here are the full-price guidelines for New Zealand:
The other big change is one for adapting to the world’s constantly fluctuating taxes and exchange rates.
“For developers distributing their apps around the world, the App Store’s global equalisation tools have given them a simple and convenient way to manage pricing across international markets,” Apple writes. “Today’s enhancements expand upon these capabilities, allowing developers to keep their local currency constant in any storefront of their choice, even as foreign exchange and taxes fluctuate.”
In other words, you can now set the price you want for your main market and have the other storefronts automatically follow this lead. Previously, this had to do manually, which is a bit painful if you happen to sell in all 175 storefronts.
These changes won’t happen overnight. It’s rolling out today for auto-renewable subscriptions, but makers of paid apps or those with in-app payments will have to wait until Spring for the changes to appear.