Apple is raising prices for apps in Australia, Indonesia and Sweden within the next 3 days. In an email, Apple has notified developers that they are updating prices in the three countries in response to foreign exchange rate variations. Prices are being increased across the board. For example, today a $0.99 app in the Australian App Store is sold for 1.29 AUD. When the changes come into effect, customers will have to pay 1.49 AUD for the same app. This is an increase of about 15% in local currency.
The changes affect App Store prices and In-App Purchases, including automatic subscriptions. Apple will not cancel existing auto-renewable subscriptions, but will let users know via email that the price they pay will be changing. This is a new direction in policy: in the past, Apple has automatically cancelled IAP subscriptions when prices rose, requiring direct user action to resume payments.
Apple will also be offering an alternate ‘cheap’ price tier for apps in Australia, expanding low-price tiers beyond ’emerging markets’ for the first time. Developers will be able to optionally offer apps for just 0.99 AUD which is roughly equivalent to $0.70 US dollars. It will take some time to see if developers choose to utilize the new alternate low-price choices.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
Yet again. Another Price rise in Oz. They went up just a few weeks ago.
Aaaaaaaarrrrrrgggggh!
Apple can always raise prices but never, ever cut them. 1 dollar isn’t even close to equalling 79p for example and has never gone above 69p since 2008 but for some stupid reason Apple raised it to 79p about a year ago for no reason whatsoever. It’s so stupid.
Note that US prices do not included taxes, which are added on after the sale. Is the same true for the UK?
You have a very valid point. In UK the taxes are included in the price.
Sucks to be a swede sometimes. Not that long ago since they made the price higher. With todays exchange rate we already pay 0.11 USD more for an app that is 0.99. Wonder how much more it will cost after this raise.
Does anyone think they lower the prices when the exchange rate goes the other way? No one? hm?
It’s like apple tries to piss me off more and more.
App store prices in the US don’t include tax, so you’re paying $0.05 more than me for a $0.99 app. Some quick (possibly wrong) math says you’re paying $0.88 for the actual app.
I’m in Australia where we got these hikes. Back in 2011 or so Apple did lower the prices when our dollar was ahead of the USD. So yeah, they do it both ways.
Annoying, but not surprising given the way our dollars been lately.