iPhone apps created for brands: What’s out there? What’s working? What’s not? And who’s thinking differently? Just some of the questions I’ll be asking, and hopefully answering, in an ongoing series for this here blog.

$1.99 is a rip-off!

I was initially going to be reviewing the CTV Olympic app, but as I started reading its reviews, I became intrigued by something else: the incredible animosity towards it.

The CTV Olympic app promises to be “everything you will need on the Games from Canada’s official broadcaster”, and when you first open it, that seems an accurate description. The extensive navigation menu has News, Live Blog, Photos, Medal Count, among other things.

But as soon as you start going through the app—looking for who won the China vs. Denmark women’s curling match, let’s say—you come up against a screen telling you to upgrade to the premium service for $1.99. And this upgrade notification comes up repeatedly. Want to check out one of their blogs or get real time results? Sorry Bub, gotta upgrade.

The upgrade is making a lot of people angry. Of the app’s 1,170 ratings, a resounding 692 are the lowly one star.

Based on the comments, most of the animosity is the result of what some describe as the bait-and-switch tactic of listing the app as free but then tacking on a two buck upgrade when people want to access any content of substance.

I do think it’s ridiculous for CTV to charge $1.99 for content that’s also available for free on their own website (among hundreds of other sites covering the games), but what I find more fascinating is the larger issue of the value of things in the app economy.

$1.99. Not a lot of money, really. It’s a coffee, a couple of songs, an hour of parking. How many times a day do you drop two dollars? But within the world of branded apps, $1.99 better buy you a kidney—or else. The culture of free has become so entrenched in the App Store that you become painfully reluctant to cough up a lousy two bucks for anything.

Certainly, people are paying for some apps, but of all the top paid apps on iTunes, most are games and the only branded app on the list is for Martha Stewart recipes. (It’s $0.99.)

The belief that branded apps should be free seems to follow this logic: Branded apps are created by big rich corporations, so why nickel-and-dime me on price. And even if a branded app is helpful or entertaining, it’s still a form of marketing. You should be paying me, dood!

It’s hard to argue with that logic. Yes, Charmin’s Sit or Squat gives you the incredible utility of consumer reviews of public toilets, but it’s still just an excuse to hock toilet paper.

For CTV, the promotion of their status as official broadcaster and providing thousands of people with a handy little Olympic app wasn’t enough. And the public have responded. Not surprisingly, the Vancouver 2010 Guide—run by Bell—has much better reviews. But it may just be because of its price…free.