> who is the greatest fool here? Not sure if this is a rhetorical question or not; it does sound like one.

In the case of a single indie developer making an app for a single app store, it seems the developer is the greater fool, since they are turning their work into a commodity, when they should be turning their complement --- the app store --- into one.

Perhaps the route for the indie developer to actually see the financial reward is to make sure their app is available on every app store. ... or maybe they need to skip the app stores entirely to keep 100% of the sales.