I must admit I thought it was an April Fool’s Joke. But today Wolfram Alpha’s iPhone app is sitting pretty at $1.99 in the app store. Originally, last year, it went on sale at $49.99 with the logic being that that is what people would pay for a really great calculator. Of course, it was a really great calculator so long as you were connected to the Internet. Otherwise it was nothing. And there were plenty of other calculators in the app store at lower prices.

So Wolfram dropped the price to $19.99. That was enough to get me interested just because the interface was so convenient and I was usually connected to the Internet on my iPhone anyway. I have used it fairly often since but could easily have just visited the free web site and got most of the experience, and information, there.

Today, Wolfram relented and dropped the price 10 fold. It is now a non-brainer purchase at $1.99. What is more, they are going to refund most of the difference to we, early adopters. Not the whole lot as Apple is still getting its 30% cut but they are offering significant price insurance there.

The interesting thing is whether they will end up selling a ton more because they spent three months at a ridiculously, above apparent equilibrium, price and then dropped it rather than just having a low price on day one. I guess we will never tell.