Undesirable customers
Instapaper Free always had worse reviews in iTunes than the paid app. Part of this is that the paid app was better, of course, but a lot of the Free reviews were completely unreasonable.
Only people who buy the paid app — and therefore have no problem paying $5 for an app — can post reviews for it. That filters out a lot of the sorts of customers who will leave unreasonable, incomprehensible, or inflammatory reviews. (It also filters out many people likely to need a lot of support.)
I don’t need every customer. I’m primarily in the business of selling a product for money. How much effort do I really want to devote to satisfying people who are unable or extremely unlikely to pay for anything?
(This is also a major reason why I have no plans to enter the Android market.)
Android is winning the numbers game - no surprise - it's free and very capable. But we all know that that this is not the main story. I find it fascinating to explore how these worlds diverge even as the headlong rush to mobile proceeds.
One key area of difference is in the apps. Indeed, Marco Arment goes so far as to include the Android market as one to avoid as they are unlikely to pay for an app. (The rest of the article is also worth a read.)
I'd love to hear your impressions.
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