Play store have competition, btw: https://www.amazon.com/gp/mas/get-appstore/android.
And the big argument against Apple is that you can't have the same for iPhones.
And the big argument against Apple is that you can't have the same for iPhones.
Oh the illusion of choice. Nobody* is sideloading an appstore on their phone to have access to a new catalogue of apps.
What is beyond comprehension to me is why Apple doesn't take notice on google playbook and put the option to sideload apps/stores behind 20 menus deep and 5 warning screens. It would applacate a lot of people, keep nerds happy and 0.001% would do this.
* Outside technically inclined folks.
So yes, I do hope the US govt forces Apple to un-clench a bit.
You’re probably right, but how many of these >200 millions are users that installed said third party store after going through the speed bumps that google put there. And how many of these are people that their phone came with said third party store? For instance fire tv, fire tablet, Chinese phones etc?
Even though I’m being heavily downvoted I still think that 0.001% would actually install third party stores as apple is the sole provider of iOS (no one else could bundle their store with iOS devices).
If you have statics that shows that most of these >200 millions (didn’t check) are users that went though the phone settings, activated developer settings, downloaded apk from amazon and installed on their phones I would be happy to be proved wrong.
Edit.
> Would love to have something like f-droid for iOS.
> So yes, I do hope the US govt forces Apple to un-clench a bit.
We’re not in disagreement here.
On Android, it's not much more difficult than installing any other app (with a couple additional prompts to accept).
Between the Amazon app store (pre-installed on Amazon Fire devices), the Samsung Galaxy store (preinstalled with Samsung phones), the alternative Chinese app store(s) (used by basically the entirety of China), F-Droid (used by the technically inclined folks you mentioned), and raw apks downloaded straight from the internet, a substantial percentage of Android phones have at least one non-Google-Play app installed.
The important part is that distributing an app to a Android phone without Google's blessing is at least _possible_, and this gives them a bit of an out for charging whatever they want on their app store. You don't like their fee, fine - you're free to try to distribute your app via another store. For most people paying the Google fee is worth it, that's their choice.
None of this is true on phones made by Apple. You either pay Apple, or they'll do everything in their power to ensure your app can't run on any phone that was made by them, despite the fact that _they no longer own the phone_. It shouldn't be a huge surprise that they're finally catching some flack in the courts for this.