RIM cuts minimum app price ahead of BlackBerry 10 launch; now £0.75/€0.89, others TBC
Fresh from adding video and music to its BlackBerry World app store last week, RIM has announced new pricing for its content. In a move to be more competitive in the run …
Context & Ripple Effects
The floor of RIM's storefront has been falling for years: App World launched in 2009 with a $2.99 minimum paid-app price, a level analysts flagged at the time as a potential price-war trigger. By late 2011 the market had moved so far that one commentary argued BlackBerry itself was worth less than Apple's App Store — the catalog, not the handset business, had become the measure of platform value.
The cut to £0.75/€0.89 lands in the middle of an intense BlackBerry 10 launch ramp: 15,000 app submissions in under two days, followed by RIM extending its developer incentive deadlines citing 'remarkable' uptake, and video and music added to BlackBerry World just a week before this pricing change. The move is explicitly framed as competitiveness — RIM is tuning both supply (developer incentives) and demand (lower entry prices) ahead of the January 30 unveiling.
First-order effects
- Developers publishing to BlackBerry World can now list paid apps at £0.75/€0.89 instead of the old higher floor, giving impulse-price points closer to what rival storefronts offer at launch.
- RIM accepts lower per-unit revenue on cheap apps in exchange for a denser, more price-competitive catalog for the BlackBerry 10 debut.
Second-order effects
- Competing app stores face pressure to match or undercut the new entry tier, continuing the floor-lowering dynamic RIM itself signaled back in its 2009 price-war warning.
- With music and video newly in BlackBerry World, low-priced apps become traffic drivers into a broader content store, sharpening the contest with ecosystems already bundling media and apps.
Third-order effects
- If minimum prices keep converging downward across storefronts, app-store economics shift toward volume and attached content sales rather than per-app margin — reinforcing the 2011 argument that a platform's worth sits in its store.
- Pricing flexibility becomes table stakes for any platform courting developers at launch, as RIM is doing with incentives plus a lowered floor for BlackBerry 10.
The trend: Mobile app storefronts are racing their minimum prices down and broadening into full content stores, as platforms compete for developer catalogs and buyer volume rather than per-app margins.