Apple has announced a major impending price increase for the App Store in many countries in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America. In one case, this increase will exceed 30 percent.
The increase will take place on October 5 and will apply to the existing price levels: in the eurozone, for example, the lowest (non-free) level will increase from €0.99 to €1.19. Developers are free to compensate for the higher price levels by dropping their apps to a lower level, but they may not be able to keep the price exactly the same.
There are fully updated price lists for the Eurozone (plus a separate list for Montenegro), Chile, Egypt, Japan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Poland, South Korea, Sweden and Vietnam. The Verge notes that Japan is facing the largest increase, with prices rising more than 30 percent.
In its announcement, Apple isn’t trying to justify the increase, but it’s likely the move is in response to currency movements. Apple is pegging global app prices to the US dollar, and all the currencies involved are all weak compared to the USD at the moment. For example, the Japanese yen recently hit a 24-year low against the dollar. (And as Reuters points out, Apple sometimes cuts prices for the same reason.) UK readers may know that the pound is also struggling, but the UK App Store has been spared the price hikes so far.