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Comment by actuator | Hacker News Reader

I am just puzzled about one bit of this, why the hue and cry few days back about this. Don't Android App stores like the Amazon one already exist? What's stopping these devs to even distribute the apps themselves?

iOS is a different matter but Android has always allowed this. Not sure if they exist in India, but I have seen Android phones come with non Google App Store as well.

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I would say that the government is not the right institution to take this up. They should support secondary app stores, or legislate to force Apple and Google to make their stores more developer friendly. Getting involved in this business, goes against their own narrative. On one hand, we are privatizing state owned companies and on the other, we are taking up vanity projects which the tax payer has to fund. Do check up on our new government building, that no one apart from the powers that be asked for. Also, this announcement very much coincided with an attempt from some of the major apps in introducing a form of sports betting (see IPL), which was thwarted by the very same Google and Apple, in line with the laws of our country. All over, it seems like American tech. giants are more pro-indian-consumer than our own government, which is tremendously dissappointing in and of itself.

Yes alternative Android app stores already exist. For example Samsung devices have their own proprietary app store pre-loaded.

Yeah alternate app stores exist but when something like this is driven from a nation stare, the Indian govt will most likely mandate inclusion of their AppStore on Android and iOS. Once it is loaded on by default, you suddenly gain 800 million strong distribution channel. It would be a no-brainer for devs to put their app on the strore. The same case could not have been made for Amazon's and Samsung's store.

Won't Apple just refuse to sell iPhones in India?

No. It won't.

That would result in a somewhat strange situation considering Apple is trying to move at least some iPhone manufacturing to India.

https://9to5mac.com/2020/08/17/indian-iphone-production-begi...

> Yeah alternate app stores exist but when something like this is driven from a nation stare, the Indian govt will most likely mandate inclusion of their AppStore on Android and iOS. Once it is loaded on by default, you suddenly gain 800 million strong distribution channel. It would be a no-brainer for devs to put their app on the strore.

What is the problem with this? If the device manufacturers don't want to preload the Indian Appstore then they can prevent sale of their devices in India. If they agree, and this is limited to India only, then what is the problem?

Putting apps on Samsung's Galaxy Store gives developers access to the 893 million Samsung smartphone users[1] who have the app installed by default, so an ever stronger case can be made for it than the government's proposed app store. Yet it does not have anywhere close to the same number of apps or devs.

1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2018/09/13/s...

This enables tax revenues for the Indian government.

Pretty sure they are already getting tax money from the existing app stores. Do you have any source that they don't?

https://inc42.com/buzz/indian-govt-likely-to-tax-google-face...

They only collect a limited subset of taxes (VAT). The larger part of income is to the US and isn't taxed in India yet.

3rd party app stores that are not pre installed by the manufacturer are crippled and provide a bad user experience. Auto updates is also not possible.

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