Does Free iPhone Software Pay?
Monday, September 1st, 2008Developers of certain high-profile iPhone applications have discovered a stream of significant, new-platform money. Smaller developers have also been able to generate modest income, with the first paychecks for many coders now received from Apple.
One category of revenue intake many developers are closely watching is that of free-to-paid conversion. Since no real shareware model exists for the iPhone, some developers have decided to offer free, limited-functionality versions of their applications alongside paid, full-functionality versions. The question is whether or not users will convert to the paid version after having used (or at least downloaded) the free version.
Stats from one developer paint a fairly grim portrait, though not one that is wholly out of line with shareware conversion rates for other platforms.
Josh Anon, the developer of FlipBook, an application that allows free-form doodling and image manipulation, says that less than 1% of users who download the “lite” version of his application purchase the full edition.
“We’re quite happy with the number of people who have decided to try FlipBook Lite and the great reviews it’s receiving! Of course we’d be happier if the conversion rate to the paid version were higher (it’s under 1%), but we’ll see what happens as time goes on. ”
FlipBook Lite currently holds the #6 spot in the free software category on the iPhone AppStore with 251,360 downloads so far.
via http://www.iphoneatlas.com/2008/08/29/does-free-iphone-software-pay/