Thursday, January 6, 2011

App Piracy: Does Offering Free Apps Help Stem Theft?

You would figure that 99 cents is not a whole lot to pay for a decent app.  However, you'd be surprise just how many folks will go to length to avoid paying for it.  I don't get it.  Developers put in hard work and paying them that isn't really asking a lot.

But since the inception of the iPhone store, many app stores including the Android Marketplace has sprung up.  Web OS has its own as does Window Phone 7.  Almost no mobile platform I know of does not have an app store.  In fact, though you might be not aware, Android has quite a few operated by carriers, hardware makers, and, apparently now, even Amazon.

And while generally paid apps vary in quality, I have to say the price reflects just how much users are willing to pay for it.  But piracy is still rampant.  

And with some developers offering both paid and free but ad-supported versions of their apps, I wonder if that has helped things some what.  I really hate to find out that folks will continue to pirate paid apps to not only avoid paying developers for their work but avoid ads as well

In my own little world, if I were a developer, I probably would offer a free and a paid version just to cover my basis.  

So, any developers out there know how things have turned out?  Does offering free ad-supported apps help stem piracy of their paid apps?  

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