Urban Airship releases in-app purchase service StoreFront
Taking the strain out of small charges
There are now a range of companies offering technical services to ease the workload of the hardpressed iPhone developer.
The latest release from US outfit Urban Airship is aimed at solving your in-app purchasing dilemmas.
Called StoreFront, and priced at 5c per download, it provides you with client libraries and backend services for quickly delivering in-app purchasing in your iPhone apps.
It's certainly seems to be released at an opportune time, because while Apple enabled such features in the iPhone OS 3.0 update, for a variety of technical and commercial reasons, few developers have experimented with them.
StoreFront gives you the ability to sell content such as new levels or unlock functionality directly within your application, which increases the likelihood users will complete their purchase and not be put off by a complicated checkout process.
Urban Airship also handle issues such as server infrastructure, bandwidth, keeping up-to-date with Apple's protocols, and monitoring feedback services.
Specific features include:
Easy integration via open source libraries or direct to Urban Airship's RESTful web APIs,
Simple content versioning that enables you to tweak content on the fly and alert users to updates,
The ability to deliver free content as well as paid content,
Instant scalability with Urban Airship's infrastructure,
And optional integration with Urban Airship's push notification service.
You can find out more about StoreFront from Urban Airship's website.
