Google announced several new programs geared towards emerging countries at their I/O developer conference yesterday. The key new feature enables prepaid app subscriptions in countries such as India that rely more on pay as you go payment plans. The Business Standard offers additional details:
“The tech giant said that it will allow developers to offer users the ability to subscribe via prepaid plans that provide access to an app and its services for a fixed duration.
“Users can extend this access by purchasing top-ups in your app, or in the Play Store. Prepaid plans allow you to reach users in regions where pay-as-you-go is standard, including India and Southeast Asia,” Google said in a statement on Wednesday.”
Among other features are options to include pricing flexibility in both style of subscriptions and price points, which helps developers reach underserved populations that may not have the stability or income to subscribe at a more traditional rate.
“The company said it’s making it easier to sell subscriptions on Google Play by allowing developers to configure multiple base plans and special offers.
“For each subscription, you can now configure multiple base plans and offers. This allows you to sell your subscription in multiple ways, reducing operational costs by removing the need to create and manage an ever-increasing number of SKUs,” said the company.
Developers can drop prices to as low as 5 US cents which would allow them to run local sales and promotions and support in-app tipping.”
These policies continue Google’s extension of price flexibility which began in 20 markets last year.
Overview by Jordan Hirschfield, Director, Prepaid Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group