Expanding Your Application Using the In-App Purchase Support

One of the most exciting new features in iPhone OS 3 for developers is the addition of in-app purchase support. Using it, you can leverage the power of the built-in App Store purchase system to allow the user to purchase additional content for your application. This content can be in the form of additional levels, additional features, and so forth. This capability enables new kinds of business models to be developed around iPhone OS and the App Store. In this chapter, you’re going to take a look at how to work with the in-app purchase system.

You’re going to see what kinds of products you can sell through your application, and how you build that capability into your application. You’re also going to see how you work with the Store Kit API for making purchases. When you are finished, you should be able to deploy an application that includes in-application purchases.

Knowing the Types of Things You Can Sell

The first thing that you need to know when working with the in app purchase system is what kind of content you can sell. There are three categories of content that you can sell as in-app purchasable content: non-consumables, consumables, and subscriptions. Non-consumable content is content that, once purchased, is available permanently to the user. Examples of this kind of content might be new levels for games, or new features in an application. In addition to being available to the user forever, that non-consumable content must also be available to the entire user’s other devices.

For example, if the user owns both an iPhone and an iPod touch, then non-consumable, purchased content must be available to the user on both devices at no additional charge. Consumable items need not be available on all of the user’s devices. Consumable items are something that the user might purchase and use within the application, and then when he has used them up, he would purchase more. Examples of consumable items would be ammunition or poker chips. The third and final category is the subscription category.

Subscriptions work just like consumables, except that they need to be available on all of the user’s devices. So, for example, a user might purchase a subscription to a magazine for a period of one month. That subscription should be available to the user in the application on all of the user’s devices.


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