How To Charge $1K For an iPhone App
By Anna Johnson on February 23rd, 2010The most expensive iPhone application on the market proves that there’s no necessary limit on how much you can charge for something, as long as you have a starving crowd and you’re the only restaurant in town (hats off to the late Gary Halbert for the analogy).
BarMax CA is the most expensive application in Apple’s App Store, priced at $999.99. Actually, I correct myself because there is a limit in this case, but it’s not due to the usual forces of supply and demand. It’s due to Apple imposing its own arbitrary maximum price (of $999.99) that developers can charge for an app.
That wrinkle aside, BarMax CA is a classic example of a product that, on one level, may seem absurdly expensive, but to the people who matter – the target market – is probably worth every dollar. What is BarMax CA? It’s an application to help law students prepare for the bar exam.
Law students eager to pass the bar exam are a starving crowd if there ever was one. After all, if they don’t pass the relevant bar exam in their state, they won’t be able to practise law… and that 4 years and $100,000 or so in outstanding law school loans will all be for nothing. (See the psychology involved here?)
What’s more, the BarMax price tag is substantially cheaper than the only alternative: the bar exam preparation courses offered by BarBri, which cost $3,000 to $4,000. (BarBri offers a free iPhone application… but only if you enrol in the BarBri program).
As the name suggests, BarMax CA is currently available for students seeking to pass the California bar exam. By the end of 2010, BarMax expects to have an equivalent bar exam preparation app for the bar exams in New York state and at least five other U.S. states.
