Classification fees threaten Australian app market

Smartphone app developers have threatened to stop selling their products in Australia if the government continues with its plans to close the legal loophoole which allows them to avoid the county's expensive classification process - a process applied to all other games.

The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that the process could cost developers between Aus $470 (£273) and Aus $2040 (£1187) per game, which could easily outweigh any potential revenues from Australia's relatively small app market.

The move follows a letter from Australia's Classification Board director Donald McDonald to Commonwealth Censorship Minister Brendan O'Connor.

"I recently wrote to the minister regarding my concern that some so-called mobile phone applications, which can be purchased online or either downloaded to mobile phones or played online via mobile phone access, are not being submitted to the board for classification," Mr McDonald told a Senate Estimates committee last year.

Bjango founder Marc Edwards, whose company is based in Australia, told the Sydney Morning Herald that closing the loophole would see Bjango cease to do app business in the country. Australian purchases account for only 4 per cent of the company's app sales.

"I understand that there's certainly a desire to treat [mobile game apps] in the same light [as PC-based games], but I think they're built and consumed in quite a different way and I think iPhone games may be a little closer to flash games on websites, certainly in some cases where they're small titles rather than [blockbuster] titles with large budgets and large timelines," Mr Edwards said.

The Morning Herald report also claims that some developers are sceptical about the government's plans, believing them to be a cynical play to increase revenue. The Herald reports that an assumed price of Aus $2000 per app could see classification of mobile apps on iTunes make $345 million a year for the Classification Board.