Google literally has multiple alternative app stores currently active.
My Amazon income is less than 2% of the Google income.
If Google has 99% current market share for mobile OS, props to them. They deserve it for working like heck, delivering something amazing, and finding a model that allows them to distribute for free.
If Google has 99% market share, and ensures it keeps 99% market share in the future by setting up licensing deals to tie Google Apps + App Store together... that deserves a lot more scrutiny.
Amazon made a half-hearted effort to compete in the space and the result is “less than 2%” in your case.
That's... one way to look at it.
Another way is that they'd be spending even more if there were more healthy competition in the alternative app store market.
Amazon is incentived to run an Android app store now, in the same way Microsoft was incentivized to maintain an ARM build of Windows: it's not a corporate priority, because it doesn't make business sense for it to be until the playing field changes.
Users don’t want an “alternative App Store market”. They want a place where they know the apps they download won’t steal their data or crash their device, where the billing policies are clear and predictable, where you can set parental controls and get refunds on accidental purchases.
Apple doesn’t have customers because they are the only one who you can buy water, electricity, or internet from at your home address. Apple has customers because people willingly and happily shovel their hard-earned money at them because their products are freaking amazing.
In no universe can anyone say that the progression / advancement of smartphones and smartphone applications indicates a stagnant market or one in need of forced government intervention.
From what I can see iPhone 1 with its 400MHz Samsung CPU and 320x480 display and its half dozen apps -> iPhone 12 with its 8 core 3GHz A14, 2532x1170 display, and millions of apps demonstrates conclusively that consumers are winning out tremendously over the last 13 years due to a highly competitive market driving truly massive R&D investment in this space.
I think the problem that people actually have with Apple is that they are so far ahead of the pack, and people don’t see where the inevitable disruption is going to come from just yet.
I.e. what would you look at and say "That's anti-competitive"?
IMO, as long as there are viable competitors to Apple, and as long as Apple is not colluding with its competitors, Apple should be able to implement any lawful policy on its own device that it chooses.
Apple can't violate its existing contracts with its customers or developers (e.g. threatening to kick off all Unreal Engine apps, e.g. lock customer data unless a ransom is paid). Apple can't use App Store policy to commit crimes, like extortion (e.g. offering to buy an app developer, and saying they will ban them from the store or increase their commissions to 50% if they don't accept the buyout).
As long as their policies have a justifiable and legal business purpose (whether you personally agree with the policy is irrelevant) that's applied consistently (within human limits of consistency) they should be free to make their own product however they want, and charge what they want for it.
What would one or both of these stores need to do, to qualify as 'anti-competitive' to you?
That's a good first step towards competition that would allow Apple to keep the AppStore exclusivity -- for now.
1) No need to re-enter billing information across apps
2) A centralized UI for the user to manage all their
subscriptions, enforce consistent billing policies,
request refunds, etc.
3) Enforce parental controls and family approval
policies which may be configured on the account
4) Prevent any surprise billings or unauthorized charges
5) Ability for Apple to force a refund even if the app dev won't
In the end, the payment processor is a red herring. Apple isn't charging 30% for the payment processing -- they probably pay less to run the charge than Stripe does. For example, for $0.99 charges, the app developer pays Apple less for their entire fee than Stripe would charge them just to run charge.
The 30% fee is Apple's share for creating the entire ecosystem. Everything from the programming language, the platform, the API's, the security framework / secure enclave, the app review, the distribution model, the billing system, the cloud services for software delivery/push notifications/updates/shared storage, all the way up to Apple's customer support lines. Actually running the payment gateway is perhaps the very least of it.
Not in the context of introducing competition.
My apps would have to be designed to comply with all of the rules of all of the stores.
No thanks.
This simply isn't true. Android is much more open yet app spend is way lower compared to the smaller marketshare iPhone.
An open app market means a flood of free apps which means less money spent. Good Devs will absolutely lose in this scenario. Outsourced sweatshop devs will do everything cheaper.
I'm sure you can release niche apps on these stores, but the general market isn't moving away from the Play Store any time soon, and that's where the money is.
What happens to a phone manufacturer who ships a phone with an alternate App store?
You get to be the best selling Android phone every year. Are we all forgetting that Samsung ships their own app store? Nobody uses it because it's garbage but that's not Google Play's fault.
If we look at market share for mobile app distribution, the vast, vast majority of it goes to the App Store and the Play Store. The competition isn't even a blip on the radar.