For four years, SwiftKey has been charging users $3.99 for every download from Google Play Store. That is going to change, starting today.
The popular predictive keyboard app, one of the top-selling premium apps on the Play Store since 2010, is now available for Android users for free, and it comes with a bundle of fancy add-ons to boot. The fifth and latest version of SwiftKey includes 30 new free themes that allow users to customize the look of their keyboards, with different colors, key shapes and trails for SwiftKey's swiping feature Flow.
It also comes with better predictions, a dedicated number row for users who don't want to switch back and forth between layouts to type a number, and additional language support. What is most interesting in the freemium SwiftKey is the inclusion of over 800 predictive emoji. For example, a user can type in the word "burg" and SwiftKey shows a hamburger emoji.
SwiftKey will also provide additional content as in-app purchases, including additional themes that cost $0.99 apiece. Packs of five themes will also available for $2.99 while 10 themes will cost $4.99. Users who have already bought the paid SwiftKey apps in the past will no longer have to pay for any SwiftKey functionality and will receive a 10-piece pack of premium themes as a reward for purchasing the app.
SwiftKey is making a significant shift in marketing strategy in an industry where paid apps are making it more difficult to extend their market share. A joint report made by the IDC and Annie App Intelligence shows that revenue made from freemium apps and in-app advertising doubled itself in the last year, while earnings from paid apps fell by 29% in the same period.
"It allows us to reach a much wider user base," explains Ben Medlock, co-founder and chief technology officer at SwiftKey. "Originally we launched the product as paid because we wanted to prove that people would pay for it - primarily because we were really focused on our licensing business. It was a lot easier to persuade Samsung to license the technology if people were paying for it. But going free it follows the heart of the app market."
SwiftKey's predictive keyboard equipped with artificial intelligence may not be the most exciting free app on Google Play Store, but sending SMS is still the most commonly used functionality in a smartphone. Apple itself has recognized the usefulness of a keyboard that predicts what its user wants to type and announced at its recent Worldwide Developers Conference that is going to include a similar functionality called QuickType in iOS 8 when it is released this fall. The iPhone maker also now allows third-party keyboard apps, such as SwiftKey, on the Apple App Store.
"To see Apple adopt a 'three-prediction UI,' which is something that we invented back in the day, and then other OEMs have sort of slowly decided to adopt, is really interesting," says SwiftKey chief marketing officer Joe Braidwood. "It's just an amazing testament to the idea that typing on a touchscreen really was in need of urgent reinvention."
