With the iPad’s big release in less than 24 hours, the all-new iPad section of the AppStore is quickly filling up with some great titles. The first thing regular visitors will notice, is a bit of sticker shock, with the premium prices these new iPad apps are commanding. As far as we are aware, developers have two means of delivering content that will display in the iPad’s higher resolution and not just utilize the pixel doubler to stretch the native iPhone App content to fill the iPad’s screen. They can either bundle the iPhone and iPad apps together and sell them for one price, or they can put out an exclusive iPad version of the App.

The all-inclusive app model will probably mean little-to-no change in app pricing to currently available iPhone apps, with the added bonus of getting the iPad version for free if you currently own the iPhone version of title. The separate iPad App model means that you now have to purchase a title that you may already own again (most likely at a premium price) if you want to get the full iPad experience for this particular app. It also means that you now have to manage two different versions of the same app within iTunes. More money and more hassle is a loss/loss scenario to the consumer. On the other hand, new iPad specific features and high resolution graphics versions mean extra development costs and it seems unfair not to compensate developers for their additional hard work.

To that end, we propose a few alternative models:

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