One in 10 Brit smartphone owners 'can't afford' to pay for apps Brits like smartphones, but half of them don't like paying for apps and two-fifths of those who've downloaded one say they'd never hand over cash for the privilege. The numbers come from MyVoucherCodes, which asked 2,611 British app downloaders what they thought the apps were worth, with only 27 per cent saying they regularly …
I'm finding it incredibly cheap to run an iPhone on PAYG. Admittedly it's mostly down to my provider not having charged me for their web access topup (I think it's now £10 per month, was £5 the last time I was charged) since the beginning of last year. Anonymous because I'd rather they didn't notice.
No petrol in the Jag, thats a good thing.. .Mine is a diesel, and the tank has fuel ;-)
Oh but I don't own an iPhone, I use an Android phone & tablet and I do buy apps on occasion, games usually, £1-£2 and its a real impulse buy, £4-£5 and I wonder if it will be good enough to be worth buying, with all the crap there is I am dubious all the time!
Ever notice how a lot of surveys are done with a relatively small sample size to the total population of X. It's almost like statisticians worked out that given the right conditions and distributions of a sample they will apply to the whole. E.g. Nearly every report, ever.
"Why pay for something you can get for free?"
THIS FREE APP REQUIRES:
Your location (course)
Your location (fine)
Your phone state and identity
Network access
Services That Cost You Money (write SMS)
Read contact data
THIS PAID APP REQUIRES:
Network access
Enjoy your popups, billboards and targetted spyware. Really, people used to get programs to remove this stuff. They were like anti-virus programs. Ad Alert, Spybot S&D.. oh but hey, it's different on a phone, right?
"oh but hey, it's different on a phone, right?"
Disregarding your sarcasm, it isn't that different - there are plenty of apps (admittedly usually requiring root) that will counteract those bad permissions.
I expect there are even some that will deactivate certain permissions completely.
The Avast firewall and AdFree for example.
I rooted my phone - you (presumably) pay for apps; "useless" works better for me than the alternative.
Having said that, the permissions thing wasn't why I rooted it. Dropping those inverted commas, I'd argue that it's the crapware present on unrooted phones that truly has little or no use (e.g. HTC Sense, UNuninstallable Facebook, etc. etc.); once I'd got rid of all that rubbish, the ability to fiddle with app permissions, block ads, and having a whitelisting firewall were just bonuses.
As with all things, it's a matter of opinion, neither yours or my situation is any justification for blanket statements.
Because society breaks down if the strong just take what they want.
Because it's wrong to take someone's work and not reimburse them for the effort they put in.
Because the cheapest option isn't always the best.
Because you value the something.
You know the price of everything and the value of nothing. If someone took all your stuff would that be ok? If they didn't pay you it'd be alright, yeah?
I've only paid for two apps, ROM Manager, and Titanium backup (Could of just enabled the premium features without paying too, but I felt these two were worth it) most of the time I feel there is a equally good free alternative, or the price is just too much for me to justify paying for it.
Along with that some apps don't offer a free version to test it, so you could just be dumping your cash into something awful, or their free versions are just ad enabled which can be removed.
Beer, as it's what I spend my money instead of apps.
So how did they target this cross section of British "App downloaders" ? If it was purely users of the MyVoucherCodes website then straight away you're dealing with people who like a freebie or a good deal, hence why they use that website. That isn't a representative cross section of people at all, you're deliberately targeting "savvy" (or "tight" if you prefer) people and asking them if they like paying for stuff!
Nope, it means you don't understand why interest rates are low and QE is happening. It's to encourage spending, be it through making borrowing cheaper or discouraging people sitting on their savings. Although the latter rarely works in a recession because people want a cushion should they lose their job, but that's just how it goes.
No mate, I understand it fully. However, those of us militant savers who've tried to do the right thing and be prudent are being forcibly coerced into spending money through inflation and zirp. Well - sod that. We've decided that we're going to save even harder - and would rather see it burn than be forced into spending when we don't need to. It's a Pyrrhic victory perhaps, but its another unforseen consequence of insane monetary policy.
"29 per cent ...said it was because they couldn't afford them, while the remaining 71 per cent said it was because the software was "overpriced"."
Presumably they were the only two options then or lots of people would have answered 'because there are plenty of free alternatives that work perfectly well' and given free-reign at least one out of 2,611 people would have answered with 'dickbut'
I pay for apps that are worth it. Currently, that's limited to a handful of games that have decent demos and that I couldn't put down and things like Torque (a car OBD app that works with a cheapy Bluetooth device I have that has helped me avoid MOT failures in the past by letting me see what's wrong without a mechanic asking me to pay for the privilege and so been worth its cost).
Apps, generally, won't be bought. The whole app-store concept is, I feel, a short-lived one. Sure, I bought a couple of apps from the Wii Store a few years back but I haven't touched that store in ages. I bought a few apps for my first-and-only Android smartphone when I first got it but stuff that was useful or, literally, cost pence. Over and above that, everything I use is free and I actually get more value out of them than the pay-for apps.
I bought my 4-year-old (who lives with her mother) an Android tablet and loaded her up with freeware. Also gave a £15 Play store credit that came with it which I could have used myself but thought I probably wouldn't spend it (and thought there might be something she wants and pre-paid credit was better than my credit card on there!). To my knowledge, that money is still on the account and hasn't been touched but she certainly has a lot of new apps on there.
About the only "app-store" that works is Steam, because it's not so much an app store as a way to purchase commercial games. There's always a bit of freeware to do any job you might need and, on phones and tablets, there's not much you *need* beyond casual entertainment and the occasional basic utility (memo-writing or calculator or similar). Hell, my smartphone is mostly emulators and network calculators. About the only really-well-used app is an SSH client, and that's hardly the type of thing you go out and pay for. I'd probably pay for a bubble-popping game before that happened.
IOS users will be bring that average up - it's probably 1% of Android users buy any apps and 90% of iOS users buy apps bringing the 'average' to 27%.
Almost all the Android users I know use their phones for no more than making calls, texting and taking the odd picture - some use for the odd bit of twitter, facebook - but almost all free apps - most had never bought an app.
Can't say I'd noticed many of those scathing reviews, unless they are quite rightly castigating a developer for putting adverts in a paid app, or turning a paid app into an adware app.
I do however, see plenty of people in reviews, saying that they'd love to pay for an ad-free variant of a free app that only has an adware variant.
My favorite Snes emulator is fully functional and ad free. All he did was disable the save function. for $3 you can get the full version. There are pages of nasty one star reviews because it can't save. All kicking and screaming that unless it saves and is %100 free its a one star app and a "rip off" though how a free app is a ripoff I have no idea.
Pages of people screaming "THIS SUCKS!" and others who claim that since the roms
"that he does not provide" are not his that his emulator is somehow immoral. It was just pathetic.
Super GNES lite, right?
Yep, there's a few idiot reviewers, which won't be prevented by Google's idiocy either. Still has a 4.1 star average though, which definitely puts it into the "awesome, shame you can't please everyone" category.
I'd give them a good review myself if it works nice but, you know, Google+ requirement and all...
They have Steve's personal guarantee, even from beyond the grave.
It's also like putting money in the collection at the church. They don't want to look a fool not paying up.
That and out of frustration for what their device doesn't do with the stock OS they'll pay anything to get the app that does do what they want.
A lot of the apps I have 'purchased' (like the excellent offroad/walking mapper Maverick) have no significantly increased functionality when paid for. But some of them are so good that you can't help but feel guilty using the free version when you can buy the author half a pint of beer for their efforts.
.
My mother was a 'Softie,
she fixed all of my blue screens,
but my daddy was an iPhanboi
who lived way beyond his means.
.
I have one foot on the platform
and one foot on the train
because I have to score at the Apple store
my latest ball and chain.
.
Apologies and gratitude of course to The Animals.
I'm sorry, but people are often just plain tight...they'll happily fork out the Apple-tax for a Jesus Phone but then claim poverty when it comes to paying for quality software. I've seen people balk at paying 69p for an application - that's cheaper than a Mars Bar and 4-5 times cheaper than a pint (depending on where you go). Unless it's 69p for an iPint, that's just 69p too much
Started using an app on my Android phone to listen to BBC in the car, and quickly ran into a data ceiling. The evil greedheads at Telus Mobility (in Canada) are demanding $25 a month for 2 gigs of additional data. That's a 50% jump on my current cel bill.
That kind of rip-off is so offensive that I can't bring myself to consider paying it, so no more BBC app.
I got an iPhone 4 on the launch day, while I was in the shop there was someone in there kicking up a huge fuss after being asked to put down a £100 deposit on the 'free' iphone.
It was on a £65 a month contract, I, and the shop clearly, could tell just by looking at them that the 'free' iphone was all they were doing it for and the monthly charge would never be paid
Most apps don't even bother trying to do things properly.
(i.e Integrate into the settings - Microsoft ones are ironically the only ones that do).
I really don't like DRM (But because the apps are so cheap I might not be too bothered.)
I certainly don't want my card attached to my phone or tablet at all though (Regardless of anything else).
(I would probably buy a gift card probably ever app I would want would cost less than £10).
I would buy from Amazon if they forced dev's to keeps the Apps up-to date. (Not interested in Googles awful customer service to users).
When it comes to games I have tons from all the Android Humble Bundles. (Actually half decent games compared the junk that allot of people seem to like anyway).
Square Enix these days are totally awful. (As a kid I imported a US Super Nintendo to play Final Fantasy III (Jap VI) / Chrono Trigger - the games cost £70 each - don't remember the console cost). I don't mind paying for them again but I want them so I can play it on a plane. (The modern stuff like Chaos Rings looks awful).
I really should avoid Square Enix completely but I like Chrono Trigger. (And still FFVI)
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