iWork goes free for iOS

At its September 2013 introduction to the new iPhone 5C and iPhone 5S, Apple devoted a few moments to iWork for iOS (jump ahead to the 16:50 mark). The takeaway:

• “iWork now consists of the best-selling mobile productivity apps on any platform.”
• The three iWork apps, along with iPhoto and iMovie, are now free with any new iOS device!

Tim Cook praised the iWork apps highly as the best productivity apps on a mobile device (“no other platform has any apps like these”), and highlighted their role in bringing creativity, not just consumption, to iOS devices. It’s great that Apple will be putting these great apps into more hands by knocking off the $9.99 price of each, as well as the $4.99 prices of iPhoto and iMovie. That’s nearly $40 in freebie software.

That’s also a loss of revenue for Apple from all the would-be buyers of the apps, but there’s likely sound strategy behind the move. As the iPhone market matures, more and more buyers of new phones will be upgraders from previous iPhones, and thus more and more buyers will already own the apps (or are just plain uninterested). Apple no doubt figures that the foregone revenue is modest compared to the competitive benefits of the move, including meeting Google’s free online apps on price (while beating them in features), giving Microsoft’s Office cash cow a kick in the ankle, and demonstrating that iOS devices are productivity tools out of the box, not simply media consumption devices.

Almost out of the box, that is. In a minor point of interest, Apple continues to separate its apps into the chosen bunch that ships with devices, and second-string apps that require free or paid download. Apple will make the process even simpler by prompting the new buyer to download the above five free apps during setup, but one continues to wonder why these apps, along with Remote, Trailers, and several other free Apple-made iOS apps, aren’t preinstalled.

Tim Cook shows the prompt to download free Apple apps on new iOS devices.

(A side note: Apple is apparently dropping its Cards app. If you’ve found that a great way for creating and sending physical cards, don’t worry: the now-free iPhoto should pick up the slack.)

So. iWork for iOS is now free. That’s great for those buying new iOS devices, and should greatly raise the apps’ visibility. But we’ve got some fun questions remaining:

• Free for new buyers… but why not make the apps free across the board, for existing owners too? Is Apple actually counting on meaningful iWork app revenue from existing device owners who don’t yet own iWork, but do want to buy it, and don’t intend to buy a new iOS device? Or is this simply a move to prevent the grumbling among the “but I just bought it!” crowd that inevitably follows any price slash?
• How much revenue does iWork  generate, anyway? Maybe we’ll never be told, but those three apps consistently place high in the OS X App Store’s Top Paid and Top Grossing rankings. Not so high for the iOS versions, perhaps…
• Along those lines, will Apple make iWork for OS X free, too? The same competitive strategies would apply, though the task would be more difficult: unlike iWork for iOS, iWork for OS X competes with long-established Mac productivity software developers who’d surely cry foul.

Whatever the answers, iWork is set to reach millions more hands from later this September. Will Pages, Numbers, and Keynote reach unimagined levels of use and public recognition? We’ll find out. (My prediction: Pages and Numbers won’t become household words, but expect to see a lot of Keynote presentations where you used to see PowerPoint.)

source: www.iworkaholic.com