I did not realize that there was this special feeling of safety with freemium services I guess... why would anyone feel safe from competitors? In any business you have a revenue model, someone can usually copy that and compete on all the other factors... no matter if your product's price (something very different than the revenue model) is zero or non-zero.
Freemium or purely-advertising-based companies should even worry about competitors that release for pay services, price is not the be all and end all of why a customer engages. And since we're strictly talking about "freemium," that implies a for-pay option. The new competitor could be a for-pay-only service but have an excellent advertising campaign (or excellent product + the word of mouth that it will generate) that simply leads more paying customers to the buy button.
I did not realize that there was this special feeling of safety with freemium services I guess... why would anyone feel safe from competitors? In any business you have a revenue model, someone can usually copy that and compete on all the other factors... no matter if your product's price (something very different than the revenue model) is zero or non-zero.
Freemium or purely-advertising-based companies should even worry about competitors that release for pay services, price is not the be all and end all of why a customer engages. And since we're strictly talking about "freemium," that implies a for-pay option. The new competitor could be a for-pay-only service but have an excellent advertising campaign (or excellent product + the word of mouth that it will generate) that simply leads more paying customers to the buy button.