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Comment by mtinkerhess | Hacker News Reader

If they decide to drop the price someday, they'll be able to make all those sales too.

It's always easy to drop the price on the app store, but very hard to increase the price. So it's rare to see an app go up in price.

Why is it hard to increase the price? Is it harder on the app store than anywhere else? Is there a way to track the price history of apps, or is there a website that does? I'd love to know, I'm considering making an (expensive) app and pricing is a hard problem for any software product.

Because the users will notice and start slagging you in reviews.

Yeah but that's true for any market. Is there data that indicates that this happens more for appstore software? I mean I'm not asking for a peer reviewed, 1000 apps study or anything, just a plausible indication that the average appstore customer is more likely to do this and/or be influenced by blog posts complaining about price hikes. Maybe just showing that appstore customers are far above average in being likely to read and be influenced by online reviews is enough - if there is some correlation to be made between appstore customer profile and sensitivity to price hikes.

It's not true for every market that customer reviews are prominently featured at the sole point of sale and can immediately reflect reaction to prices set directly by the developer. That combination is pretty unique to the app store right now.

At the risk of training people to wait.

As far as I can remember, OmniGroup has never lowered their prices or had any significant sales. I could be wrong about that though.

I'm sure they know what's best for their business and price accordingly, but personally the only software I own from them is OmniFocus. The reason I haven't bought more is nothing special--cost vs. utility. I'd love to use more of their stuff to enhance blog posts or presentations, but I don't see it happening their $50+ prices unless I have some very specific business purpose or I have a lot more disposable income.

Training people to wait isn't that much of a negative. New people who don't know to wait always show up, and the people you train to wait ensure you have a heavy secondary market (see Trade Paperback books, second run movie theaters, etc.)

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