Survey Says: iOS Users Hate App Subscriptions but Spend More Anyway

iPhone X Trade-In deal for T-Mobile.

Research from Creative Strategies show that iOS users don’t like app subscriptions, but still spend more than Android users. The data comes from a survey of 800 smartphone users in the U.S.

[iOS: How to Find and Cancel iOS App Subscriptions]

Survey Results

The results of the survey show that 20% of them browse the App Store daily. A further 32% say they browse it weekly. On the Android side, 9% of people browse the Play Store daily, while 21% browse weekly.

Select and move multiple apps on iPhone and iPad

Of course, the results of any survey with a small sample size should be taken with a grain of salt. But we’ve been hearing a similar story for years now: iPhone users spend more than Android users.

When it comes to in-app purchases, the results were similar in that the people “did not feel like they were tricked into an in-app purchase or subscription.” However, subscription-based apps had different results. 54% of iOS users said they prefer a one-time payment and 47% of Android users said the same.

[Apple is Allowing Free App Trials for Non-Subscription Apps]

3 thoughts on “Survey Says: iOS Users Hate App Subscriptions but Spend More Anyway

  • On the server and corporate level software subscriptions are a well established model.
    On the consumer level, software subscriptions are a contemptible money grab. ITts one thing if I’m subscribing to a service, for example an anti-virus with regular updates. But for simple stand alone apps there’s no reason.

  • What I find a complete turn-off is that so few apps with in-app purchases list those purchases and their prices on their app store pages. Nope, I’m not going to install an app just so that I can find out how far from free it actually is.

    Slight kudos here to 1Password: there is some teeny-tiny gray text on their page that one can touch to find out the bad news.

    1. I’m with you on this. Apps that don’t tell you anything about the in app purchases until you actually download them, or even worse, pay real money for them just to find out that true functionality comes at the expense of further in app purchase make me immediately say ‘no thanks’.

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