That way of thinking assumes that the people you are giving recommendations to care most about your app’s availability rather than the persons own preferences and motivations. If your audience is non tech savvy (group defined by not being a specific group, eg much broader), good chance they have a broad set of preferences unrelated to your free app availability.

This point above is more of a “save your breath” suggestion as tech savvy people would much more likely be interested in this trade off when considering a which device type to purchase.