A large part of the problem is the "race to the bottom" mentality. Users have been taught (by Apple) that software is $0.99 - if not free. You have to get massive user numbers before that becomes profitable, or find another way out of the trap.

Google's Market is pretty good, and there's always the option of self-distributing (Swype does this and it is still very popular).

I wouldn't use Amazon's App Store after reading things like this. It's less usable for customers and it takes a lot out of the developer's control. However, I've seen developers handling this very badly. For example, they get shocked by the way the Free App promotion works (starting with the fact that it's FREE) and then try to remove the app from the store and deny those customers all further access to updates and the ability to reinstall (which may be wanted reasonably often if you use custom firmware). I don't care if you sold it for $0 or if you got burned by Amazon, that's still a bit of a bait-and-switch.

The 'race to the bottom' on pricing diesn't seem to have hit the Android market in the same way as the iOS app store, from what I've seen.

I've not had any difficulty justifying paying more for an app/game, thanks mainly to the 15 minute refund window.

Bad handling on the developer's part is a valid complaint alright. I'm sure it's frustrating and painful to have to support potentially large numbers of users (note: not customers) for no gain whatsoever. That, along with the obviously lacking editorial control to respond to troubled users is a glaring red flag to steer clear of the system.

Users, customers - if you do a free promotion, you're doing a business transaction with them. It's not like they went and hunted up a rogue APK.

15 minute refund is usually good enough to run the "does this work on my device" check, although it doesn't always cut it if there are network issues or if something crashes or what have you. I'd be more comfortable buying more casually if it was longer, but it's much better than not having it. (Another reason not to buy from Amazon.)

Users/Customers: I agree that they're the same thing in this case. I just don't like how the enormous volume of the free users, compared to the tiny number of paid ones, has resulted in them having to up their actual hardware costs just to support the system as a result of this :(

Yeah. It's often a poor value proposition and can cause a lot of negative fallout if you aren't prepared for and planning to exploit the numbers it generates (see also: Groupon).

It would be very interesting to see what big-ticket participants thought of the process (e.g. Angry Birds, Plants vs. Zombies).

I installed the amazon app store. Mostly because I was on amazon looking for a book and the free app of the day sounded interesting. I haven't actually looked at it since then. One thing to be aware of, apps from the Amazon app store have Amazon specific DRM if you uninstall their app store any apps gotten through it stop working.