Hybrid pricing can help app developers better monetize their apps • TechCrunch

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It seems like everyone’s been talking about Lensa AI this week, but a less obvious point about this AI-enabled top of the range caught my eye: its hybrid pricing. Could it be an example of a new path that other developers will follow? Let’s explore. — Anna

Black Friday(s)

App pricing has long been a point of contention between Apple and developers. “Strong critics of Apple, like Spotify for example, have argued for years that lack of pricing flexibility is hampering their business,” reported Sarah Perez of TechCrunch.

Apple seems to have heeded the complaints: this week, the Cupertino company announced that its App Store pricing system will gradually increase pricing tiers and allow developers to “fix prices for apps, in-app purchases or subscriptions as low as $0.29 or as high as $10,000 and with rounded endings (like $1.00) instead of just $0.99.

The demand for greater pricing flexibility is the consequence of another trend: the shift from paid app downloads to subscription-based models that may require more granularity to optimize revenue. But some developers haven’t waited for Apple’s move to offer hybrid pricing models — those that combine subscription economics and other types of monetization — which may soon become the norm.