You might also notice that across different currencies and price tiers, Apple tries to stick with “clean” and consistent numbers where possible. But on the whole, the 6 month average is reasonably close to the exchange rates that Apple has set. The blue bars indicate the exchange rates that Apple has adopted for the various price tiers and you can see that at different points over the last 6 months, Australians have been getting apps relatively cheaper (when the blue is below the green) and at other times for relatively more than those in the US. It’s a challenging game to keep ahead of fluctuating currencies, as you can see from the above graph which shows the last 6 months of the Australian dollar against the US dollar. For example, in January this year, Apple adjusted the price tiers in Europe and Canada to reflect the weaker British Pound, Euro, and Canadian dollar.
Historically, Apple has intervened on a few occasions to adjust the value of price tiers in some countries to reflect a persistent and substantial change in a currency’s value. But currencies fluctuate in value all the time, so they will rarely be exactly equivalent. Importantly, the value of the price tiers in each of the different currencies are roughly equivalent in value. You can see in the above table that price tier 10 is USD$9.99, AUD$12.99, £7.99, and ¥68. So each price tier has seperate prices for every currency, whether it be US dollars for the US, Australian dollars for Australia, British Pounds for the UK, or the Yuan for China. What makes operating in that many countries challenging is that most of them have their own currency, which would significantly complicate matters if developers had to provide a price for every country that they offered to sell their app in. It’s easy to forget that the App Store operates in a lot of countries – as of today, the number stands at 155 countries. $899.99 to $999.99).īeyond just limiting developers to specific prices that Apple approves of, the price tiers do serve one vital purpose: simplifying the global pricing process for developers. Beyond tier 50, the prices increase in an accelerated nature, with the last 5 tiers increasing in $100 increments (e.g.
In the US App Store, the first 50 tiers increase in value in $1 increments from $0.99 (tier 1) to $49.99 (tier 50). Each price tier corresponds to a different price that the app will sell for on the App Store, which in the US ranges from $0.99 to $999.99. There are 87 price tiers and 7 alternate price tiers (which we’ll discuss later) for developers to choose from. Technically speaking, when developers submit their apps to the App Store, they do not choose a price for their app – they choose a price tier.