$30M in 30 days - Saying hello to Micro-payments?

Despite all the be-moaning that surrounds the internet about Apple and its latest iPhone. You have to admit they must be doing something right.

Steve Job's (you might have heard of him) announced this week that in Apples AppStore had made a massive £30M in 30 days. $1M a day through a relatively small and insignificant area of their behemoth business. Wow.

This is very interesting news. App Store is, in essence, a paid for version of Google's gadget directory and is surely proof that 'empowering the user' is the cash-cow of the day, and to think, Steve wasn't even going to open the iPhone API up for fear of hacking and unlocking (he needn't have worried, that was inevitable).

Most of the apps you can buy from AppStore range in price, from £0.50 to as much as £999 (a one off app that is now removed from the store)! There are a plethora of free apps, however the majority of them cost in the region of £1.20 - less than the price of a cup of coffee or a supermarket sandwich.

Now this got me thinking about Micro-payments. Of course, what Apple is doing is not really micropayments - far from it actually. However, i believe that what is happening is, on a psychological level, users will now start to become used to paying pittance for an online purchase.

The thought of paying 50p for an app really doesn't throw anyone. It's such a small amount that we're willing to pay it without too much consideration about it breaking the bank.

This is the thought process that providers need users to adopt, and become the norm, if micro-payments are to become successful.

Of course, online ringtone providers have been trying this for years, however they just don't have the same 'cut-through' and high profile as Apple do.

Andrew Girdwood, a fellow bigmouth, has been evangelising about micro-payments for a long time.

The ivy-league banks still don't really have the infrastructure to be able to cope with them. So providers are having to be creative. I've seen one micro-payment solution that means you have to stock up an account with cash before you use that reserve to purchase your goods. Again, not the true sense of micro-payments, but a good way to allow providers to introduce the idea of micro-payments to consumers.

It is the way the online payments are going to go. It has too. $30M in 30 days is a true show of how profitable a system like this can really be.

I'd be interested to see how Google are going to respond to AppStore with the release of the first Android based phone. They brought the idea of an apps (Gadgets) directory and open API's to the masses.

I'm sure a company who prides its self in becoming a billion dollar company "..1 cent at a time" will have something innovative up their sleeve and i hope it uses micro-payments.

In short, its a win-win, consumers get affordable and (mostly) quality apps, they get mega-bucks! Who's to argue!

ps- this post has been written on the train to London and has been relatively painless!