What happens when I "remove" a paid app from the Apple and Android App Store?

Question

Suppose I have two sets of apps, approved and currently for sale, in the iTunes Store and in the Google Play Store: on is called Foo Free and the other Foo Paid.

Foo Free is a free application, for iOS and Android. Foo Paid is the same application, only it has a couple of more functionalities than the free version, and costs, say, 5$.

In a bout of generosity, I decide to phase out Foo Paid from both the stores, and offer the same functionalities of Foo Paid in Foo Free, that from now on, becomes the only Foo application available.

So, the questions:

• How can I remove Foo paid from each store? I know that I should deselect all available countries in my iTunes Connect, and the applications gets out of sale. What is the equivalent action to take on the Google Play store?

• Once I remove the paid apps from each store, what is going to happen to the users of the paid apps? Will the app(s) disappear from their device(s)? Or they simply keep the app and never get any update again? Is there any difference between Apple App Store and Google Play store in this respect?

• Is there a way to make this transition "graceful", for each store? i.e.: can I make users that bought Foo Paid transition automatically to Foo Free, without having to download Foo Free manually?

Answer 1

How can I remove Foo paid from each store? I know that I should deselect all available countries in my iTunes Connect, and the applications gets out of sale. What is the equivalent action to take on the Google Play store?

On Android you just need to unpublish the app from the console. The app will disappear from the Playstore

Once I remove the paid apps from each store, what is going to happen to the users of the paid apps? Will the app(s) disappear from their device(s)? Or they simply keep the app and never get any update again? Is there any difference between Apple App Store and Google Play store in this respect?

No the app won't be removed from their devices but won't be ever updated again. No difference on that from AppStore to Playstore

Is there a way to make this transition "graceful", for each store? i.e.: can I make users that bought Foo Paid transition automatically to Foo Free, without having to download Foo Free manually?

No, different bundle/package means 2 different apps. You can make an update on the paid version (before removing it) to redirect to user to the free version (store link)

Answer 2

Why don't you do it the other way around? Phase out the Free one, give it a final update which just strips the app down to nothing more than a message explaining your situation and a button with a link to the Paid version, so they can install that one.

And just update the Paid one to be free.

Like this, your paying customers have the upper hand of at least not having to do anything for it, while your free users will probably not mind to do a download to get more options they normally would have to pay for.