[danhor]

While people don't discover these apps on the play store, they will hear of the App, search on the App/Play Store and install it. If they can't find it by typing the app name into the search bar there, they won't install it.

I doubt most users will, even when given the link to an .apk, install it. Either because they are discouraged by the alarming prompts (in my opinion a tradeoff that is unfortunately worth it) or because they get lost.