Essay on The paid apps have more features than free apps
Along with development of various technologies in our lives, new ways of earning and correspondingly spending money started to appear. It is next to impossible to imagine a modern person, irrespective of his position, type of work and interests without a cell phone, without notebook, tablet or computer. People got used to practically live with their gadgets, which substituted a lot of things in their lives, like for example watch, usual phones, usual written letters, television, books and so on. Not only young generations are using their phones and computers for all these purposes, saving time and effort, but maybe not money. It is clear, that when purchasing any gadget it is necessary to pay for it, at the same time, to be able to use all of its functions, it is often necessary to buy various applications, for video, for internet resources, for reading and so on (“Free apps vs. paid apps, which is better” 1). The modern computer industry suggests two variants of applications – free and paid ones. On the one hand free applications seem rather beneficial, because consumers don’t have to pay extra money for them, on the other hand, in most cases free applications have limited functions and in order to get the full pack – consumers still need to pay. Further in this paper we are going to discuss the situation with free and paid apps; will trace the history of their development; the modern situation, showing all the advantages and disadvantages of both free and paid ones.
People nowadays are used to seeing advertisements everywhere, on TV, on the road, in Internet. Most of them are really tired of being forced to read usually not useful information on their smartphones and tablets. However, the situation is different for most consumers in case we are talking about free apps, because people agree to watch advertisements in their applications as long as they get them for free and really don’t want to pay even $ 9.99 for an ad-free application.
Usually people choose the applications in accordance to their personal interests or professional activities, in case there is a chance to have a look at a person’s phone, it is possible to guess, whether he is a sports fan or he likes to travel or to cook or is involved into psychological studies for example. Usually apps could be got in two forms: free applications with ads and paid ones – correspondingly without adds. Some individuals just can not bear the constant advertisements, breaking the needed content, and they are ready to pay only for the fact, that the application is free of ads. There is certainly another important point which should be considered – free apps normally have less functions or some limited access to all information in comparison to the paid ones and thus those people, who really need the complete package of functions or the complete information on a topic – they are to choose the paid applications. “Even when a specific app does not come in paid and free versions, there are often other apps to choose from, free and paid, that perform very similar tasks like calling a taxi or looking up recipes” (Gordon 2). In order to understand the preferences of the consumers in this relation, it is possible to study the situation with iOS apps, which are available for a longer period of time, than Android apps. “The chart below shows how the proportion of free versus paid apps has changed over the years in the App Store. Between 2010 and 2012 the percentage of apps using Flurry Analytics that were free varied between 80% and 84%, but by 2013, 90% of apps in use were free” (Gordon, 2)
After studying this graphics some might conclude, that the main idea is to make the content free. It is not quite correct, in fact the major outcome of this survey is that most people would choose free applications and would tolerate ads, instead of paying money for avoiding them and getting the content of the best quality. Certainly, it is really necessary to consider the particular situation, for which the applications are chosen, because in cases with specialized enterprises or for example pharmacological or financial spheres consumers are to choose the full package.
It was already mentioned, that iOS apps have longer history, but if to compare them to Android applications it is necessary to underline, that Android users are less inclined to pay for them than iOS consumers. “As of April 2013, the average price paid for Android apps (including those where the price was free) was significantly less than for iPhone and iPad apps as shown below. This suggests that Android owners want app content to be free even more than iOS device users, implying that Android users are more tolerant of in-app advertising to subsidize the cost of developing apps” (Smith 3).
The users of iPad without any doubts pay more, than owners of other gadgets. “On average, the price of iPad apps in use in April of this year was more than 2.5 times that of iPhone apps and more than 8 times that of Android apps. This is likely to be at least partly attributable to the fact that on average iPad owners have higher incomes than owners of other devices” (Gordon 3).
Some market expects conclude, that free apps are much more popular nowadays, mostly due to the fact of serious competition in this field and this leads to the necessity to earn money for applications’ download in a different way. Consumers agree to include advertising into the content of their applications under the condition that they are free, thus the money for free downloads is fully compensated with the help of in-apps purchases.
So, there is always a choice for the consumer, whether to buy an application or download for free. As it was already mentioned, for most people the fact, that it is necessary to pay for some app, which might turn out to be not the one, which was really needed and not providing all the necessary functions, makes people choose the free versions. At the same time, it is very important to consider the major area of using for this application. For example, if this is a usual game, then in most cases it is luckily to be downloaded for free, because the person playing this game would simply ignore the advertisement and continue playing. In case a businessman is using an application for his work, any type of advertising would probably seem distracting and irritating. This means, that usually leisure applications are loaded for free and business apps could be bought.
Often, the applications, which are in use for a long period of time and consumers are already completely aware of the functions and advantages of them, could be well sold. But the apps, which are absolutely new, risk to remain with very low downloads till the moment they gain sufficient number of positive reviews (Perez 3). Software developers are to have constant control over the situation with free and paid apps. According to their studies, consumers have started to use more free apps than before. This tendency has been developing within several years already (Sorry Indies, Your Free App Will Make You Broke” 1)“As the figure shows, the tendency towards offering free iOS apps has increased by as much as 10% (2011 figure) in the run up to mid-2013. This suggests that more people are choosing to download free apps and whilst paid apps remain, higher priced ones have all but disappeared” (Butters 2).
Overall, we have briefly studied the actual situation with free and paid applications; made a short overview of the history of paid applications going up to the current moment; we have considered the differences between free and paid applications, concluding, that paid applications have often less downloads and are said to start loosing their popularity, but still they have more features to use and thus for some concrete specialized fields of technology or business, like medicine, manufacturing and so on can not be fully substituted with free apps.
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