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My friend and I were looking into <Brain.fm>. Appa...
# random
m
My friend and I were looking into Brain.fm. Apparently, they have different prices for different platforms. It's super cheap on Android. 4K one is IOS. Once you buy it on any of those, you could use it on all platforms.
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r
Its most probably because, apple takes 30% commission and play store is not charging a commission of 30% yet. . That's why there is a price difference. PS: I am just guessing.
c
Service fees on almost all platforms are 30%, and have been for a very long time. Ref: https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/112622?hl=en This is most likely either a price testing strategy (which means you will see different prices on different instances of the same platform) or breaking the rules (all platforms have restrictions on offering a lower price outside of the platform) in the hope that iOS users can (and do) pay more.
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r
Same is true for Pocket and TickTick. Many cross-platform subscription apps have cheaper prices on Android+India because they assume low-purchasing power (I think).
f
I am not entirely sure but I think this is because Google natively provides regional pricing options in their billing library. So it's quite easy for developers to provide regional pricing based on Purchasing Power Parity. This is not the case with Apple App Store. USD prices are directly converted to INR. That's all.
c
Again this is not true @faint-energy-11966 Here’s an overview of how App Store Pricing plays out across regions: https://www.macstories.net/stories/a-beginners-guide-to-app-store-pricing-tiers/ Play store needs you to manually input local prices or have a pricing template that is linked to exchange rates, that you can manipulate: https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/6334373 In both cases going from USD conversion to having regional prices is a pretty small amount of effort; and actually lesser in the Apple walled-garden. (Note: both of these ways of pricing have been around for a long time, and I have faced this choice when trying to set up pricing for our product almost 4 years ago.) I am absolutely certain that the differential pricing is deliberate, either in being deceptive or being an experiment.
Just to be clear, I think all these platforms are getting an unfair variable reward for fixed effort. The 30% or any other cut makes no sense at all, and is clearly abusive and hurts the consumer. They also do not share the rewards that they reap directly or indirectly with the community of developers that makes their platforms valuable. They provide a service, but it’s not a service that is linearly proportional to the revenue an app makes. In fact, if anything it is near enough fixed. And also Google and Apple (and Sony and Microsoft and Epic) are all massively culpable, if only in different ways; and I find the misinformation and skew in this really revolting. Sorry and back to Brain.FM’s weird pricing.
f
From the very article you shared. Apple has fixed price tiers. But not flexible pricing based on PPP.
A lot of other services have different subscription charges across android and iOS On such example is Pocket
c
Please read further down in the article. And there are even more of the “alternate tiers” now. The default behaviour for both SDKs (App Store/Play Store) is conversion; read the Play Console documentation The localised pricing at pseudo-PPP is an option (semi-manual in Play Console, automatic in App Store). FYI all cases (including Pocket) of having different pricing across platforms x regions is deliberate and has nothing to do with what is possible or easy in the platforms.
f
Yeah, I've seen that chart but again these are limited tiers. If a developer chooses to charge 1.99 USD they only have two options for INR 120 or 150.
c
Netflix - US vs India. I’ll rest my case here as I am not even sure what you are trying to prove here.
f
redacted I am simply pointing out the facts from the very articles you linked. Netflix doesn't use in-app billing. Their in-app billing on iOS stopped in 2018. To buy a netflix subscription you have to visit their website. So Netflix's price comparison is invalid here.
c
I did not realise I was being hostile. I’ll DM you to clarify.
And apologise if this was hostile to anybody; not intentional.
b
Is this a good app? Looks a bit snake oil-ish
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