Apple today informed developers that App Store price tiers, including in-app purchases, will be rising in Canada, Israel, Mexico, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore and South Africa within 72 hours (via The Next Web).
In Canada, for example, Tier 1 pricing will increase to $1.39, a 20-cent rise over current $1.19 pricing. That means a $1 app on the U.S. App Store will now sell for $1.39 on the Canadian App Store.
Apple has published a PDF document with a complete list of new pricing updates in all seven countries. The price changes are in line with fluctuating foreign currency exchange rates against the U.S. dollar.
Apple will email customers with in-app subscriptions in Canada, New Zealand, Mexico and Singapore shortly before their existing subscription renews to inform them about the price increase and the option to cancel their subscription.
App Store customers in Russia and South Africa will need to manually resubscribe at the new prices. Israel will not be affected, as Apple does not offer auto-renewal subscriptions in that country.
Apple is also expanding its low-price tiers Alternate Tier A and Alternate Tier B to Canada and New Zealand, both valued at 99 cents in local dollars. These tiers are often used for smaller in-app purchases.
Last, VAT has dropped from 24% to 20% in Romania, but App Store prices have not changed in the country, meaning that local developers should begin to receive increased proceeds from app and in-app purchases.
Top Rated Comments
When did Apple set Canadian, Russian, and other such monetary policy, and what would their iPhone sales do to affect it? Or are you claiming that Apple somehow sets these policies for sovereign nations in completely separate continents based on app prices?
EDIT: Everyone who replied to my post completely missed my point. The Canadian dollar is decreasing every day, which hurts everyone except people who get paid in USD or Americans who shop in Canada. Apple increases the price of all their products to reflect the horrible rate, which hurts us even more, so of course I'm pissed. And some of you will say, "well uh consider urself lucky cuz its cheper 4 u", and to that I hope you realise that our salaries don't increase, so... :rolleyes:
The alternative is that they can simply not make their apps available to you. It costs them money to support those that buy the app and if they aren't making enough on the app itself then it's often easier to not bother selling in those markets.
Quit crying that you have to pay a price that's normalized because the strength of your dollar is so poor. The US didn't get any benefits when the US dollar was doing poorly. Instead you Canadians went on and on about how awesome it was.
The raise is mostly for developers as we are seeing less earnings selling internationally due to currency exchanges. Apple will inevidently benefit from this since they do take a 30% cut. But we can't really expect them to compensate for the currency changes from their own pockets. Or lets just keep it the same and developers can start applying for unemployment benefits because users are so cheap these days. No one wants to pay even a few dollars for apps these days but go buy $7 frappe mocha latte chai crap.
See my comment above. My advice don't judge or make a comment without a good understanding. It's either they adjust rates to reflect exchanges or they compensate for it from their own pockets or keep it the same and let developers earn less than the pennies they earn today.
You need a lesson in basic economics/finance.
$1 USD = $1.45 CAD.
So as a matter of fact, with their $1.39 CAD rate you are actually paying LESS than your US counterpart.
As also stated below, they actually should have raised the prices for these markets a while ago. But I personally think they actually wait for the market to bottom and stabilize before adjusting. I expect them to do the same going in the other direction. Though I would love it as a developer if they were more responsive. I lose a lot waiting for them to adjust.
That would be a good idea, though the implementation might not be feasible. But given the fact that these currencies have been going down for a while, it would be nice if they reacted quicker. It seems they really wait until it bottomed and stabilized before taking action.
When they have 200B+ parked, they don't need the 30% cut of a few billions to pay that.