As of today the status is:

Bitcoin has a marketcap of 6000M$ and perhaps 3-5 million users
Nxt has a marketcap of 26M$ and perhaps 1000-10000 users(?)
eMunie has a marketcap of 0M$ and 0 users(?)
ethereum has a marketcap of 0M$ and 0 users

Whether that will change is hard to predict, and anyone guessing it right will stand to make a fortune. With regards to premine/IPO I think you're right. Why would a superior concept need millions of investment when Bitcoin itself was boostrapped from 0$? It's actually a good contra-indicator. I don't mind risk-capital pushing things forward. there is a lot of handwaving/marketing going on. again, Bitcoin didn't require that at all, and nowadays it would be very easy for a new protocol to emerge. I'm confident that appropriate meta-protocols and markets will evolve overt time. Exchanges will ban clones / pump&dumps as demand for those coins will fade.

Having said that I don't find that the concepts of the alternatives are "solid", quite the opposite. There are some interesting ideas, but very far from proven. And you can't really reset the bootstrap process/money supply function. A system with a dynamic money supply could be an interesting experiment, though.