App Store prices are set to rise with little notice. Photograph: Alamy
Apple is implementing a blanket price-increase on the App Store in the EU and Canada, the company has said in an email to developers.
Without specifying what the new tiers would be, the company told developers that “prices on the App Store will increase for all territories in the European Union as well as in Canada and Norway, decrease in Iceland, and change in Russia. These changes are being made to account for adjustments in value-added tax (VAT) rates and foreign exchange rates.”
Apple also fails to give a specific time as to when the increases would hit the store, saying only that it would be “within the next 36 hours”, a timeframe that ends at 11am Friday morning.
The increase is likely linked to a new pan-EU policy which requires the company to deduct VAT based on its rates at the customer’s location, rather than the company’s. Since Apple’s European headquarters are nominally in the low tax jurisdiction of Luxembourg, that represents an increase in VAT for many users. Until now, that increase had eaten into developers’ margins, rather than be passed on to consumers, but that seems about to change.
Developers don’t have the option to pick any price they want for Apps on the store, instead being limited to a series of tiers which are linked across nations. The cheapest apps are currently $0.99, €0.99 and £0.69 (the latter two prices converting to $1.17 and £1.04 respectively), with prices increasing at different rates from there: a doubling in dollars to $1.99 more than doubles the British price, to £1.49 ($2.25), and less than doubles the European price to €1.79 ($2.12).
With the cost set to increase, the discrepancy between European and American prices will only grow. Users with a wish-list of apps to download can sneak in ahead of the price rise if they hurry, although how much they save will only become clear after the fact.
For Russian app store users, the prices are only going to “change”, rather than “rise”, suggesting Apple will be fiddling with some of the tiers in response to the country’s significant currency devaluation in recent months.
Apple did not respond to requests for comment.
