Fiksu, quoted in the article, is also in the business of pay for position. We tried them once and all the downloads came from Egypt, China and similar places but none of the users actually used the app. It did artificially boost the ranking but only as long as you keep paying. I hope Apple stops these type of folks.

There is an immense amount of redundant 'crap' in app stores and I really wish they would get away from boasting about how many apps are in the app store.

I do wonder if the solution is to 'wrap' the app inside a container that reports some sort of user id/app id hash back to the store when it is fired up.

Just to add to the "anecdotal" evidence: I watch App Store rankings for my app like a hawk, and aside from the comment about rankings not changing as often, maybe once in 2-3 hours, I haven't noticed any other changes. My app is rated very highly (4.5 for most recent version), and it's ranking inside Business category is consistent with revenue as before. Haven't noticed anything different.

Our app, which is also highly rated, jumped significantly while our lower-rated competition dropped.

I think this is a good move - it will make everyone work harder to make a better quality product.

Bad for the 'buy downloads' industry, good for the 'buy reviews' industry.

Of course, since you have to download an app in order to review it, the 'buy downloads' industry and 'buy reviews' industry are one and the same.

I never understood why they let this behavior go on for so long in the first place.

Pay for downloads was shady, but what do the little guys have left now?

Making a great app.

Are you implying that it is impossible to do that anymore and be successful ?

No, but it's a lot harder to be successful when not many people are going to get a chance to see it.

Getting just about impossible. Like trying to succeed at the Tour de France without doping...