Google today announced that it’s going to allow developers to set introductory subscription pricing for their Android apps. This new option for app subscription pricing will be made available to developers soon. What this means for the average user is that they will be able to get the benefit of a limited-time discounted price on app subscription before they have to start paying full price.
For example, developers will be able to offer a subscription for $1 per month for the first three months before they decide to start charging the normal price. Developers will be able to come up with their own prices and timeframes that best suit their objectives.
Google has decided to make this move a couple of months after Apple confirmed that developers will soon be able to enable automatically renewing subscriptions in iOS apps. It merits mentioning here that Android developers have been able to do this since 2012.
Introductory pricing will help developers bring in more subscribers by lowering the cost of entry and thus allow them to grow their subscription business further. Google has only said that this option is “coming soon” and didn’t provide too many details about it at this point in time.
For users, this simply means that the cost of subscribing for the first time will go down significantly for some apps and who doesn’t like to have that.