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Comment by morpheuskafka | Hacker News Reader

Google Play is not a monopoly! It takes one checkbox in Settings to open the floodgates to any app (or app store) you want, and device manufacturers (such as Amazon) can ship their own app stores pre-enabled if they want.

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What percentage of android devices, in the world, have that box ticked?

Enough for Fortnite to get players on Android

I'd guess most of them, if you actually consider the whole world.

Probably not enough to matter, if you are only looking at the UK.

Actually, alternative app stores can make use of that as well. The installer app needs to be installed as a system app with proper permissions, and it will them be able to background install apps on demand just like Google play does. The F-Droid Privileged Extension[0] does just that. While you need to be rooted to add/register such apps, that's not a problem for device manufacturers.

[0] https://gitlab.com/fdroid/privileged-extension/

As of Oreo Google doesn't allow this for devices if they're to pass CTS without users jumping through multiple hoops first.

Oh, good point. I forgot about China.

If you open an APK it prompts you to go right to Settings and enable it. Actually easier than installing Firefox on a brand new Windows Surface, which requires an MS account to enable unknown app sources.

Correct me if I'm wrong but it's seem that technically 3rd party store can't do unattended upgrade while Google Play can.

Its actually no more single button. A button per apk source

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