Adriano Serroni

Versioning in the Apple App Store: the Impact of Free Versions Adriano Serroni

Since its opening, The Apple App Store has been subject to a dramatic increase in terms of number of applications downloaded and number of different applications available for download. However, the App Store is a very competitive marketplace, with an ever-increasing number of competitors entering. Under these circumstances, what is the best strategy to adopt from the point of view of market players? Starting from literature on information goods and versioning, the book is trying to shed some light on the issues associated to the potential impact of free versions on the download of the related commercial versions: in what cases do free versions represent a menace for commercial versions download? Is there any relationship between the efficacy of free versions in boosting commercial downloads and the category of the application? (e.g. Games, Utilities, Travel, Social Networking)? Are newcomers more likely to implement a free-versioning model than incumbents or vice versa? The study tries to answer these questions through the support of an empirical analysis carried out on a 4-months dataset collected from Apple UK App Store official rankings.