$50 isn't much for professionals who pay hundreds of dollars for reference manuals ... or are on location in NE Turkey without laptop Mathematica access.

I'm guess W intends an access lite for later.

For decades, most tech products coming on the market start out high-priced (HD TV's for a recent one). Why should Wolfram look like it's low-balling? They know you've got a $200+ phone and are paying $1K a year to use it. Mathematica isn't cheap either: how much will the App cut into sales?