substitute iphone app and ipad app with universal app

Question

i have two apps in the app store an iPhone app and an iPad app. now i build a universal app and dont know how to substitue the existing two apps with the universal one. because my iphone app has an old version the app rating is not good. can i 'reset' the rating with my new universal version? In this Situation i have two ways

1. replace the iPhone app and make the iPad users download the new universal version and delete the version the has
2. upload the universal app as new app with new app identifier and make all my user to download the new one and remove the old one and then make the older version not available (in this case i would get rid from the low rating)

Thanks

Answer 1

What I would do is replacing the app that has the most users, so to force the least number of users to delete an app and download a new one. In other words, if the iPhone app has, e.g., many more downloads than the iPad app, then I would remove the iPad app from the App Store and update the iPhone app with the new universal version.

This reasoning does not take into account the following:

1. as you say, the iPhone app has bad reviews, and you would keep them all; users would have the possibility of rating it again, but there would be some inertia;

2. you don't know for sure how many "active" users your two versions have; specifically, if the iPhone version has got bad reviews, chances are that most users have already deleted it from their devices; to have a better estimate of "active" users you could use the number of downloads your app hasd on their last update.

Hope this helps.