Apple App Store Pricing Hiked for Certain Countries

Apple is on the verge of increasing the retail price of its applications in the App Store of certain countries. In an email sent to Apple developers on Tuesday, the company stated that it would bring in some changes to account for foreign exchange rates. These changes would also be implemented within the next 24 hours.

The prices will increase in Australia, South Africa, India, Indonesia and Turkey due to changes in foreign exchange rates. The rate at which the price rises will be based on the difference between the US dollar and the currency of that particular country. However, the prices in Israel and New Zealand are set to reduce as part of the same adjustment.

Apple mentioned that they made some minor adjustments in pricing because of the changes in the local tax laws and foreign exchange rates. The tech giants are yet to state by how much the prices are going to increase or decrease, but said this information would be released to developers soon. The increase in price will apply to all iPhone, Mac, iPad and iPod touch apps.

Since the company is tied into a pricing matrix that developers themselves can choose from, it will be interesting to see the extent to which the App store price rise. It has almost been three years since the company was hailed for bringing down the App Store pricing in Australia by over 25%.

Mobile applications are now becoming an increasingly key part of the company’s business as it looks to compete against Google Play. Recently, Apple had reported that it had crossed 65 billion app downloads in the first-quarter of this year. Further, it also announced that its iTunes service market made up $4.397 billion of its total $57.59 billion this quarter.