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.
