Something is not kosher with these numbers. Anyone going through the effort of publishing an app to the App Store will at least download it themselves and have at least a few friends or family members do the same.
Pure speculation: maybe these apps are actually ebooks or some other kind of static content just packaged as an app and they are generated by an automatic or a semi-automatic process. Assuming that the article is correct, of course.
The article is not correct. The original source says these apps get 0-10 downloads per day. So they could be getting over three thousand downloads a year and still fall into the category that the article says has "never been downloaded."
Exactly - this number being stated as an "exact" one is very suspicious. "Barely ever downloaded" would give it a lot more legitimacy, but I guess only Apple could give us the real number (which I really doubt they would)