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Comment by sofixa | Hacker News Reader

> I would like to see an alternative android app store, which can also serve closed-source apps

Don't Amazon, Samsung and Huawei have their Android app stores, for any app?

Yes, you are right. The real problem is the ubiquity of Google Mobile Services (GMS) though, rather than the app store itself. For example, GMS are pre-installed on all Samsung devices, but Samsung's equivalent is not installed on all Google devices.

This means, that everyone will still use Google Play for in-app purchases out of convenience.

Neither Amazon nor Huawei is selling devices with Google Play Services right now. Both have their own alternatives to Google Play Services. Amazon offers an unnamed collection of APIs (the push notification one is called Amazon Device Messaging) for its Fire devices, and Huawei offers Huawei Mobile Services.

Amazon Device Messaging: https://developer.amazon.com/docs/adm/overview.html

Huawei Mobile Services: https://developer.huawei.com/consumer/en/hms

For Huawei this has only been true since the US-china trade wars. There are still a ton of Huawei devices with GMS pre-installed.

A service like GMS would be important for Samsung, too, as there are quite some Samsung devices out there. However, with GMS pre-installed on all Samsung devices, the Samsung Galaxy Store is completely useless as everybody and his brother will use Google Play for app and in-app purchases.

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