Deal of the century: Wolfram Alpha iPhone app slashed from $50 down to $1.99!

It pays to wait they say…

If you were one of the naysayers who realized the unique/(possibly gimmicky) feature set of the Wolfram Alpha complex function solver. Essentially it was an app for geeks and rather deep pocketed geeks as WA did go for $50. At that price, one would think hardly anyone would bite. But according to Wolfram themselves, a touch over 10,000 sales at $50 have been recorded so far — no small feat.

If you didn’t jump on the curiosity bandwagon and were waiting for a sale, pat yourself on the back because this is the sale of the century. Old Wolfram Alpha: $50. New Wolfram Alpha: $1.99. Ya, that’s basically theft. Now there’s no reason to try out this geekery.

For the record, those who didn’t wait, purchased the app at the old price, and subsequently feel robbed can go as far as requesting a refund from Wolfram Alpha whom have already stated they’d happily (really, happy?) refund unhappy customers’ money. Win win hmm?

AlleyInsider

Wolfram Alpha temporarily lowers overpriced iPhone app [Follow up 2]

The Wolfram Alpha “intelligent search engine” that we mentioned here and here is back in the headlines today. The cause for concern, or in this case interest, is that Wolfram Alpha has decided to lower the price on their iPhone app for the holiday season. Starting today and running through the end of the year, Wolfram Alpha will now be on sale for $19.99 — much more reasonable than the previous $49.99 dragging behind the app like a lead weight.

Like many of you, I would assume that at $50 and a rather niche market, Wolfram Alpha hasn’t sold massive numbers of the app. In fact, I’d even go to say that they haven’t even made that much money on it. Sadly we’ll never know until Wolfram Alpha releases sales figures — which they’ve declined. Such is a sign that when described in plain english equate to suck, terrible, total loss, etc. Of course Wolfram goes on to say that sales of the app are “robust” and that they have “beaten our expectations solidly”. Right. Prove us wrong Wolfram or at least put our curiousness to ease. Willing to be a little more transparent with your actual sales? Or are you still in denial that $50 for a search engine is reasonable?

TechCrunch

WolframAlpha does it all wrong, neuters free version, overprices “real” app.

In the book of “Ways to kill your profit”, WolframAlpha would have a two-page spread. One page for the insane price of of an intelligent search engine/question answerer and the second page would be about how they took away a dependable service. More on that second point — WolframAlpha used to have a pretty good iPhone optimized site. That was until they realized no one was buying their overpriced app. Solution: Neuter the free offering and force people to pay the amount of 5 large Pizza Hut pizzas. Ya, not exactly a great idea.

The normal website is still accessible after dismissing the annoying pop-up that encourages you to buy the $50 app, but again, removing a once highly popular and used feature simply because you’ve failed to add any real value to your actual app is a sign someone needs to be fired.

TUAW