Can reputation manipulation boost app sales in Android market?

With the big success of the mobile application (app) sales, attackers are also attracted by the potential profits in the app market. In this paper, we survey current app ranking schemes as well as existing app reputation manipulation schemes and raise some interesting while arguable questions. Based on an app installation data set collected from a university campus community, we quantitatively investigate the answers to two questions: (1) what is the impact of app reputation and download number on app sales and (2) will attackers make profits from the manipulation of app reputation or download number. Although the results may not be generalized to the global app market, they provide a new view point for further investigations.