One of the hallmarks of web based applications in the last few years is the cost – for the most case they've been free to the users. Of course someone must pay for all the servers, coders and everything else needed to run a company. While the good times and the VC investment money flowed in, many companies have focused on growing the user base rather than build practical foundations of income. But are we in for a shock as our favourite applications start to reach into our pockets?
The problem with paid services is that they are often so expensive, if you look at the extra value you get compared to free ones. You mentioned the 7 euros for files on Ovi; that's over 80 a year!
I don't remember the price estimates for the push service of Nokia mail, but it sounded like too much as well, for something you can almost get for free (using Google mail & mail for Exchange, or just having the automatic retrieval switched on)
With these free services, I think the strategy is to create multiple versions of the apps.
For example, with Nokia Messaging(email). You can create a free version that only updates every 6 hours for free and have a limited size to have only retain 3 days of email record.
For a complete/full version. The user can have live updates and 3 months of email records available.
Another thing is to insert ads into the free version and limit the screen size and for the full version the ads section is removed.
The only way this transition is going to happen is through micropayments, and I don't believe we have the infrastructure in place to administrate/facilitate this today from the banks.
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