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Comment by aresant | Hacker News Reader

In iTunes it's a regular strategy to give an app away for free for a week or two to promote a special, a launch, or otherwise, and then see residual sales come in when you flip back to paid - particuarlly on social games etc.

Don't understand this policy in android.

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Apples and Oranges

Apple/itunes doesn't show the download count for apps. So switching an app from free to paid wouldn't cause any confusion. App-store rankings are based on downloads from the past three days. However, these rankings (and the last-3-days-counters) are reset when the app is changed from free to paid. The total number of downloads (since day 1 for the app) doesn't really matter.

My understanding is that Google wants to indicate the total download-count for apps. In this case, an app that changed from free to paid will have a misleading count. That is probably why Google doesn't let anyone change their free app to paid.

Now Google could obviously make things a bit more complex and use two separate counters (one for free and one for paid), but for now, it looks like they don't want to do that.

So I think I understand why developers can't change a free Android app to paid (and I also understand why some developers can find this annoying :). ---- Btw I didn't design the system and I'm not defending it. I just tried to explain why free Android apps can't be changed to paid.

That is a completely ridiculous reason to not let people give away apps. Just change the frickin' counter system.

Meant to up vote but downvoted. Boy does hn suck on apple devices.

Hostile to developer reasoning like this is why most devs I know stick to iPhone. Yeah, apple ain't perfect, but at least their reasons make some sense.

That sounds like a technical justification for a business problem.

Well they're all engineers right? Except for that guy that walks around spouting how he knows everything about everyone and you shouldn't do anything bad if you don't want it to get out. You know ... the CEO.

It's a good guess, but I really don't think the download counts have anything to do with it.

Whether or not there's any good reason to have this policy, the real problem is that it's utterly unclear when you're making an app free that you'll never be able to undo that without submitting an entirely new app.

If that's the policy, then when you choose to make an app free it should be in your freaking face, clear as day. "Warning: if you make this app free, you will never be able to make it a paid app unless you submit it as a new app" would do the trick just fine...

Look at the way it's currently explained:

"3.3 You may also choose to distribute Products for free. If the Product is free, you will not be charged a Transaction Fee. You may not collect future charges from users for copies of the Products that those users were initially allowed to download for free. This is not intended to prevent distribution of free trial versions of the Product with an "upsell" option to obtain the full version of the Product: Such free trials for Products are encouraged. However, if you want to collect fees after the free trial expires, you must collect all fees for the full version of the Product through the Payment Processor on the Market. In this Agreement, "free" means there are no charges or fees of any kind for use of the Product. All fees received by Developers for Products distributed via the Market must be processed by the Market's Payment Processor."

Maybe I'm just stupid, but when I read that, I certainly don't think that "once free, always free" is the message there.

App-store rankings are based on downloads from the past three days

If you go from free to paid (or vice versa), your ranking is reset. They're different charts.

IMO, Android is taking the right approach.

1) Developers will game the system. They give apps away for free to get good reviews and higher ratings. I am more generous on a free app than a paid app.

2) You are baiting users to get your app for free initially and then making them pay for the upgrades.

In the Apple app store, ratings given when an app is free do not carry over to a paid for app, so any extra ratings you get are ignored. Reviews are carried over.

There are a number of websites/apps with lots of users who look for free apps to try out, and rely on this method to try out some really good stuff.

I see nothing wrong with this, you are giving users something for free that is normally not, and a great way to get new people to try your app. A very valid and welcome marketing technique.

You can try out any paid Android Market app for 24 hours.

Not true. When you get the app for free on iTunes, you own it, even if they charge later. There's no distinction between if you got it for free or not.

Free apps generally get worse reviews. Also, once you've obtained the app by any means then all updates are free.

I wouldn't call that gaming the system. If I recall, there was a pretty unknown game by PikPok that was released as a paid app, they made it free for a day, then raised the app price back up after that day and it worked very well for them, they even made it to the top 25 paid apps and was number one free app the day it was free.

If this wasn't a good idea, or was considered gaming the system, I'm pretty sure the FAAD (http://freeappaday.com/) for iPhone wouldn't be as popular as it is right now. People love FAAD.

Baiting? Isn’t that a bit harsh? Is “try before you buy” morally repugnant now? (And don’t say free/paid dual releases are the “right way.” Having two separate apps has data migration issues, and inflates app availability total, benefitting the platform operator more than developers.)

"The try before you buy" strategy is baked directly into the 24 hours refund.

> I am more generous on a free app than a paid app.

Then you're the minority. Free applications are tried by more, price is a gate, and on Apple's AppStore free applications are consistently lower-rated than paid ones.

> You are baiting users to get your app for free initially and then making them pay for the upgrades.

You have no idea what you're talking about do you? I've yet to see a single paid upgrade, if that's even possible, apart from a "v1" to a "v2" which is paid for by everybody (including those who bought v1)

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