Android owners currently enjoy the benefits of Amazon’s “Free App of the Day’ promotion, wherein a popular premium app is put up as free for mass consumption for a limited time. This model has drawn many consumers, benefiting Amazon, but has seen a backlash from the development community, whose download revenues have suffered accordingly. GetJar has announced today the launch of a competing service, GetJar Gold, which offers multiple premium apps for free download, rather than just one a day.

The incentive for developers is the same concept as Amazon pushes, higher visibility and a larger audience, which is supposed to translate into larger sales in the long term. While this makes theoretical sense, many developers may not wish to take the initial hit to their daily download revenue in order to gamble on future gains as a result of the publicity. For developers, it remains to be seen whether or not this business model will remain viable, or become positive in the long run. For GetJar, and consumers, the move is positive. GetJar gets higher traffic, and consumers get some of the best premium applications for no charge.

[via: ReadWriteMobile]