Apple to raise prices of apps and in-app purchases by ~25% in 3 regions, making the lowest app prices now 99p in UK, 80 rupees in India, and 3.49 lira in Turkey
UK costs will numerically match those of the US, meaning that a program that costs $0.99 will now be 99p.
Context & Ripple Effects
This is a familiar lever for Apple: it raised Russian app prices after the ruble slid in late 2014 (an exchange-rate-driven increase), lifted the UK minimum to £0.79 in early 2015 (alongside hikes in Canada and the EU), and adjusted seven more markets in 2016. The 2017 move extends that pattern to the UK, India and Turkey with an unusually large step of roughly 25%.
What is new is parity framing: Apple is aligning the UK's numeric price floor with the US dollar tier, so a $0.99 app becomes 99p rather than keeping a local discount. That matters because the same playbook recurs — India was hit again in 2020 (in a batch including Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia, Russia and South Africa) and the euro zone in 2022 (a broad euro-territory increase) — making each adjustment less a one-off correction and more a standing policy.
First-order effects
- Consumers in the UK, India and Turkey face a higher entry price immediately: the cheapest apps now cost 99p, 80 rupees and 3.49 lira, with every paid tier above the floor shifting up ~25%.
- Developers selling into those three markets collect more local-currency revenue per download without changing their own list prices, since Apple sets the currency tiers.
Second-order effects
- Developers with price-sensitive catalogs must decide whether to absorb the demand hit at the new tiers or restructure regional pricing, particularly in India and Turkey where the low tiers carry volume.
- Because the UK floor now numerically matches the US, Apple has removed a long-standing cross-market arbitrage argument, pressuring its own future tier design to stay dollar-aligned rather than purchasing-power-aligned.
Third-order effects
- If the recurring pattern holds — Russia 2014, UK/EU/Canada 2015, seven markets 2016, six markets 2020, euro territories 2022 — App Store pricing functions as a managed float that Apple resets whenever currency moves erode its dollar-denominated take, and local price levels converge upward on US tiers over time.
- That convergence makes the App Store's price architecture a structural input into developer economics worldwide: regional affordability gaps narrow on Apple's schedule, not the market's.
The trend: App Store pricing is drifting from locally calibrated tiers toward dollar-parity floors that Apple periodically resets as currencies move, with emerging markets absorbing the largest steps.