You are talking about a target market's ability to pay, which is a real and important consideration.
I think shimfish is talking more about a market's willingness to pay, which is a very different consideration. You can absolutely poison an otherwise viable marketplace by setting the buyer expectation to be free.
I think "reluctance to spend money on apps" is a big problem on Google Play outside of the population that must chose between a $5 app and food on the table. I've just seen a lot of grumbling among even affluent people about dropping a few dollars on an app when they'll easily spend 3x as much on a single drink. That's a problem in the perception of value.
I wonder if app prices could be more on a sliding scale by geography? Has that been tried?
On the other hand, it heavily influences the perception of the platform itself - for a random utility that does something, my expectation is that there will be free apps for that on Android, while the iOS equivalent will cost a couple euros. Multiply that by many apps and that's a reason to choose an Android phone if you want to avoid all these extra fees for every app you'd use. It would be compensated by a richer choice of apps, but it isn't in practice, Android is large enough so that there's a good app for everything anyways.
I think shimfish is talking more about a market's willingness to pay, which is a very different consideration. You can absolutely poison an otherwise viable marketplace by setting the buyer expectation to be free.
I think "reluctance to spend money on apps" is a big problem on Google Play outside of the population that must chose between a $5 app and food on the table. I've just seen a lot of grumbling among even affluent people about dropping a few dollars on an app when they'll easily spend 3x as much on a single drink. That's a problem in the perception of value.
I wonder if app prices could be more on a sliding scale by geography? Has that been tried?