Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Apple announced a pilot program called “contingent pricing for subscriptions” yesterday that will let App Store developers automatically offer discounted subscriptions for users of other apps. Developers, the company says, will be able to base this on subscriptions “from one developer or two different developers,” which lets them not only to entice customers they already have to their other apps, but also compete by offering deals to their competitors’ subscribers.
There’s a slight catch here: According to 9to5Mac, the discount is only good while the customer’s other subscription is active. So if someone tries an app because it offered a deal and decides to cancel the other subscription, they’ll go back to the normal price. Apple also…