Well said. An ecosystem where paid promotion is the only path to reach the top of the charts incentivizes (even requires) the developers to become as aggressive as possible in terms of monetization, which often sucks for users and user experience.
Well, the problem is that reaching the top of the charts matters, because being at the top of the charts is where sales come from.
If there were something about the app market that really led itself to a winner-take-all tournament-style compensation, then I could shrug and think that AppGratis is merely the manifestation of another problem, and if it weren't them it would be someone else.
I'm not sure the app market really needs to be that way. Rate people based on average rankings, for example, giving new entrants a grace period before competitors can bomb them into 0-star region. Quality will eventually out.
I am not exactly familiar with how the Apple App Store is structured, but I know Google Play has sections for top new apps[1], which is restricted to only recent apps.
It still doesn't solve the problem of launching an app and having no one download it, but at least it means that they're not competing against entrenched apps with millions of installs.
But what about SEO and SEM? Don't you think that to grow ecommerce players, SaaS vendors, etc... or directories need to be aggressive there? It's true for every platform where there is mostly one path to entry.
Now with the open web at least, there are multiple paths...with social media, etc...
