is there a way to gradually release an application to the app store?

yaron.elh · August 2012

Does Anyone know if,
there is a way to gradually release an application to the app store?

sylvainww · August 2012

What's your purpose? You can do release it first in 1 country. Let's say Canada, before the US. That way you can get feedback from real users before making your big launch.

dljeffery · August 2012

First you would have to clarify what it means (to you) to "gradually release" an app.

alan@appromoter.com · August 2012

As above. Not sure what you mean. What would be the purpose of it?

yaron.elh · August 2012

sylvainww
you are spot on, but I don't know exactly how to go about it
can you explain how this can be done

jeffery, alan Thanks for the response I will be glad to hear your feedback sylvainww
was spot on that's exactly what I want to do I want release gradually to to get feedback from initial locations.

I have contacted Apple about this, but the answer was a little bit vague so we are still sending it back and forth.

that's the exact phrasing I sent to Apple support

I have a general inquiry about releasing my app to specific stores, which is regarding to the position in the "Release Date" list of every store.

1)Does an app store treats a release date as a date released in that store? Or is it global release date, regardless of the store it's published in?
2) does an update count as an you release, and will be shown in release date list?

Example of a scenario:
If I release my app in the UK and I was satisfied with the result, and decide to proceed to the US store
when I opened the app to the US store do I get listed in the "Release Date" list according to my release to the US.

Would be great to hear your experience on this

yaron.elh · August 2012

sylvainww can you explain how this can be done?

chrismaddern · August 2012

Pricing and availability is set per-region. In the Apple Developer Connection you can set different availability dates for each region.

e.g. Set it to next week for 'worldwide', then set it to now for 'Canada' and that should have the desired effect.

sylvainww · August 2012

Yeah from what I recall you can choose which store to publish your app too. At the bottom of Rights and Pricing, you have this "Unless you select specific stores, your app will be for sale in all App Stores worldwide." Click on the specific stores part then uncheck the ones you don't want your app to appear on.

yaron.elh · August 2012

got an answer from Apple

Not very encouraging, and took a bit of time to get the answer I was looking for.
it goes like this

Apple response was

thank you for providing additional clarification on your inquiry. The release date remains the same across all app stores. So if you were to add the US store 2 weeks later, the original released date for the UK store would show.

I hope this answers your question, if you have any additional questions feel free to contact us so we can continue assisting you.

I wanted to be 100% sure
so I asked

that means correspondingly the Position in the released date list
Will be according to an app release date of 2 weeks ago, even doe the app is new to that store?

Apple responds

You are correct. The position in the New Release section would based on the release date of the app, not the date it was added to a particular country store.

Basically what they're saying is that the stores are not independent, you can't gradually release.
the date is global and is set by your initial release regardless of the stores you choose.

even though you are not releasing globally, you are actually releasing globally.

sylvainww · September 2012

Ok, now I get your question ;)

Not ideal indeed. It would be way better if the release dates were different.

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is there a way to gradually release an application to the app store?

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