There's a lot to be said for being an early entry to an app store that you expect to stick around even if early adoption is slow. I'd throw the Windows Store in

There's a lot to be said for being an early entry to an app store that you expect to stick around even if early adoption is slow. I'd throw the Windows Store into that category, and while I've never used it I think the Mac store may be similar. Even if your initial product isn't great, if store adoption is slow then your good-enough MVP has a chance to gain traction just by being better than limited alternatives. That gives you time to improve it if viable, and by the time better competition shows up you're well ranked because the early competition was bad. As a possible example of this, was Instapaper so highly ranked and successful because it was quantifiably better than the alternatives (once they arrived)? How much of an advantage was its status as one of the first available apps? For a different example that perhaps shows the advantage better, consider the Android "Exchange by TouchDown" which was one of the early way for Android users to connect to Exchange accounts, still available for the low low price of $19.99. Last time I looked a year or two back, it really hadn't kept up with the competition and in fact is often not needed at all on more modern phones, but it's still there with between 1 and 5 million downloads and a cumulative rating of 4+ on the older app. On the newer version that runs Android 3+ the same app has effectively cratered, but they've still probably sold a few million dollars worth of it because of its history.