Using the term lottery and pointing out that 60%+ don't break even makes a very inaccurate assumption: that all of those apps are equal in quality of production and marketing. They aren't.
High quality apps which are combined with a high quality marketing and PR push have a far greater chance of success than the 912th Angry Birds ripoff that was built in two hours.
See Instagram for an app this author probably thinks hit the app store lottery. In some respects they did get lucky, however all of the work that went into releasing and publicizing the app gave them the potential to have the kind of luck most apps could never have, because millions of people would not download those apps, use them daily, give them 5-stars and rave to their friends about them even if their app were the top result for every search, chart and list in the app store.
tl;dr: the better your app is and the harder you work to market it, the 'luckier' you will get.
High quality apps which are combined with a high quality marketing and PR push have a far greater chance of success than the 912th Angry Birds ripoff that was built in two hours.
See Instagram for an app this author probably thinks hit the app store lottery. In some respects they did get lucky, however all of the work that went into releasing and publicizing the app gave them the potential to have the kind of luck most apps could never have, because millions of people would not download those apps, use them daily, give them 5-stars and rave to their friends about them even if their app were the top result for every search, chart and list in the app store.
tl;dr: the better your app is and the harder you work to market it, the 'luckier' you will get.