I am thinking of chaqnging one my app from free to paid to further support the development. If do this change and enabled a trial, what wil hapen with existing users after they update the app from marketplace? Will they have the full paid version or will they be in trial? It does not seem fair if they wil get stuck in trial.
Anyone who installs your app while it is free has basically purchased your app for free. So if you update the price, it won't affect those users because they've already "purchased" the app. They'll receive any further updates to the full version of your app.
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Edit: My question may not have been clear: so I'll rephrase:
I'm asking: is there a way to update my app through the App Store (continue to push updates to users) if I decide to stop selling my app?
Original question:
I'm a mac dev assessing whether I want to sell my app through the App Store.
One question I had was, if I ever decide to stop selling through the store, will I still be able to issue app software updates to the initial users who downloaded the app.
Hopefully this is an easy YES. This seems important to me because if the answer is NO, then Apple's kind of locking the dev in to keep selling the app.
Define "stop selling the app". Meaning you are offering it for free, or pulling it from sale in the App Store?
If you are offering it as FREE, then YES, you can still issue updates to new and existing users.
If you pull the app from the App Store by "Remove from Sale", then NO, your app will not appear in the App Store, and the same goes for updates, you will not be able to push any new updates until it becomes available in the store again.
Apple does not want you to offer your app outside of the App Store. Back in the day you could provide it as an unsigned developer binary and Mac OS would complain, but allow you to install. Apple is now making it harder if not soon impossible to do this.
Currently I am working on a Xamarin project which is basically a college news app (just like newspaper apps like "Times Of India" etc). I have used Microsoft Azure for updating news blogs.
My question is when my Xamarin subscription expires, will my app continue to work or not?
Actually, if you buy any of the annual licenses, you are free to continue to recompile and develop. It is only the monthly indie licenses that prevent development if you do not renew. In either case your built app will not be affected
The app itself will continue to work but you will not be able to recompile if you dont reactivate the Business licence
I published 8 of my apps earlier in the year with a one-time payment option, without any issues. I have also seen sales come through on the merchant account. Today, when I tried to publish the ninth app, I get the error -
Up-front payments aren’t supported for ARC apps at this time, but you
can still publish your app as free and add consumable products for
in-app purchase. We’re working hard to enable support for paid ARC
apps, so be sure to check back soon!
Why does it no longer work? Any guesses? I'm trying to get them published soon so they are available for schools to purchase.
I already have a free version of my app in App Store. Now I want to add a completely new paid version of the same app (with extra features).
Is it required to implement In-App-Purchase or can I simply add the paid version as a new app?
You can create a paid version of your app with no problem. It will get approved. So it's really up to you. But using in-app purchase makes it more convenient to the user. They will be able to switch to full version of the app without losing any data (like achievements for a game, or documents created with the free app).
If you look at the app store, you'll see both options. There are many free "lite" versions of an app, and the full versions which you need to pay for.
In-App purchases are also common, yet they need more effort to develop.
I am developing an app, which I have tested on the visual studio Emulator. I would Like to deploy it to about 8 Phones within our organization. Is there a way to deploy apps directly to the phones without going through the marketplace, or without having to pay the $99 per year app hub memebership fee. I don't need to deploy apps to the marketplace place at this time, just directly to our personal company phones.
I have tried running the "windows phone developer registration", but I get a message stating that I have to register my phone in the Marketplace, and that is where I am asked to pay a $99 membership fee.
Nope, unfortunately you can't deploy to any phone you want. The phone needs to be developer unlocked, meaning you need to have paid the $99 AppHub membership fee and registered the phone. I believe you can register a maximum of 3 phones under one account.
The other option is to, of course, jailbreak the phone. Google to see if you can lay your hands on a copy of Chevron WP7. The other owners may not be very willing to go along with this though. On the other hand, they'd probably love it if you bought all of them AppHub licenses :-)
You can unregister phones on AppHub, so maybe you can buy one license, unlock 3 phones, test on those, then unlock another 3 after unregistering the first 3 ...
If you have one developer account, you can use the beta feature on the AppHub to allow the other users in your organisation to download the app from the marketplace.
You just have to add their LiveId to the app. There's a limit on users, but if it was 10 or 50, I can't remember. You should go check it out.
If you don't have a developer account, you're pretty much square.
Stay tuned for Chevron Labs, where you will be able to unlock multiple devices for a small fee (in case you don't need to distribute apps in the Marketplace - exactly your situation). Otherwise, your only official choice is the AppHub unlock.
You must register as a developer, for which you have to pay the $99 registration fee. However, the new AppHub update gives you the ability to deploy your apps to the phones in your enterprise at no further cost, and they do NOT have to be developer unlocked.
You have two options. First is the private beta, in which you can have up to 99 people get your app before it goes through certification. I don't remember if this is time-limited or not. Second, is after your app gets certified, you can publish it as a hidden app, and only those people that you want to be able to install the app can. No one else can even see it in Marketplace.
Don't mess with unlocking the phones you want to put the app on - the best way is to go through the process and publish the apps as hidden.