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supergilbert

When is an alternative Android play store coming?

To all the entrepreneurs reading this: please create one. To all the VCs reading this: please fund one.

It's badly needed. I heard Huawei is working on one but I wouldn't bet on it.

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There are many: https://medium.com/pen-bold-kiln-press/best-google-play-stor...

F-Droid already exists.

Yes but none of my friends and family who own an Android device know about it.

I'm talking about a mainstream alternative android store. The design of f-droid is not appealing enough.

F-Droid has a pretty strong foundation in my opinion. It just needs more resources to be able to publish app updates more quickly. It also needs a redesign, like you said, but I don't think there's a need to start from scratch

So do you mean a store run by a company that has the money and intent to promote such a store enough for everybody knows about it, e.g. Facebook, Amazon, or Microsoft?

I don't think this is a solution.

Amazon has an app store but it's just an inferior play store really. Nothing exclusive, I don't think, and just Amazon takes 30% instead.

1. F-Droid can't be published on Google Play Store, because they're an "alternative market".

2. Please, make it appealing for you and others! https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroidclient

FTP was fine. Plus it was easily mirrorable.

> I'm talking about a mainstream alternative android store. The design of f-droid is not appealing enough.

Make it mainstream. Spread the word. Install it on family devices.

How else you think mainstream will happen?

Yes, that would be nice, but at this point it would take a few billion to replicate all the functionality - who is going to be willing to pay for that and be still tied to Google? Might as well start a brand new smartphone/OS company...

F-droid only hosts free and open-source software, which is a very small portion of the app market.

What else would you expect? Any other commercial app store - especially VC-backed - will eventually follow suit with Google's and Apple's stores in order to maximize profit over everything else. This includes denying any kinds of donation links.

Too bad you need a rooted phone with F-Droid Privileged Extension installed in order to have the same functionality as Gplay.

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