It's entirely possible to focus on both stability and, say, a quality desktop application. If you're under-resourced to accomplish both goals, maybe you didn't plan correctly.
which all available evidence says is one account worth $20 a month
... surely you haven't reviewed all available evidence on this question? Or did God give it to us when he gave us AB testing? I'm joking, but I think you're trivializing a nontrivial question. I'd like to know how to find "all available evidence"; my experience is that this kind of thing can be very hard to measure.
Edit: it's worth remembering that Steve Jobs made almost an identical argument to Alex's in his critique of Flash last year, even emphasizing that it was his most important point: "We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps" (http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/). Sub-standard apps are exactly what the OP is about.