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Comment by stuartjohnson12 | Hacker News Reader

The monopoly on app stores by device manufacturers is absurd, and doubly so when the governance is incompetent (which is always).

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What monopoly? The Samsung Store is the alternative to the official Google Play store. Any Samsung android phone that has the Samsung Store also has the Play Store, no?

Yes, Samsung phones get two app stores by default - Google Play and Samsung.

Yeah and they're both hostile to the user.

> Yeah and they're both hostile to the user.

If you had to pick the top thing that is hostile to the user, what do you think it is?

And on this case it's a duopoly. What doesn't make any difference at all, so people tend to not qualify their N-opoly words.

but ppl can install alternative stores, no? ther's the huawei one too and the open source store, I forgot the name

Yes, on the most recent Android, there is no monopoly.

On anything else, it's there.

> Yes, on the most recent Android, there is no monopoly.

> On anything else, it's there.

Alternative app stores for Android have existed for a long time. Samsung Galaxy Store, Amazon, Huawei AppGallery, F-Droid, Aptoide, etc. They are also available for older versions of Android.

And Android never let them work properly.

It has been working for over a decade. All you have to do is install the third-party app store's APK, and give that app permission to install or update apps.

The F-Droid app repository has been available since 2010, no Samsung/Google restrictions on installing it.

https://f-droid.org/

Have you tried running any app you would actually use on any AOSP phone that doesn't have Play Services installed?

With Android 12, anyone can make an app store. Previously you had to let the user approve a bunch of prompts for every install or update, but the new API allows silent background updates just like on manufacturer apps.

Of course you need explicit permission from the user to install apps (that just makes common sense) but I've been using F-Droid Basic which works like a treat.

Only Amazon has tried to launch an alternative app store so far, and I'm it sure if they use the new API that makes automatic updates possible. However, there's nothing standing in anyone's way to bring competition to this market.

If you can come up with a better store, you can take one of the many open source app stores out there and add a sales feature to turn it into a business venture and take on Google and Samsung. I'm not sure how this will go down on iOS when they will eventually allow installing external apps, but I imagine the situation may be quite similar.

sounds risky if they can release a following Android version that gimps it

The EU would lose its shit if they tried that. Google has actually been on a path that makes it easier to create competing app stores, no doubt pressured by EU legislation.

The EU hasn't lost its shit about Android slowly moving from open source to proprietary Google SDKs yet. We won't be safe until they force a Ma Bell-style split, freeing Chrome and Android from Google's tentacles.

The EU hasn't made any laws mandating that all software must be open source, so I don't see why they would care about Google closing the source on new Android components. For all the EU cares, Android 14 (or at least its non-GPL parts) may as well be closed source under license, which was the norm before Android came along in the first place.

The EU has made anti-gatekeeper laws, targeting Apple, Google, and other gatekeepers.

You should really have said “monopolies” to agree with the plural “manufacturers”. Though it would highlight the flaw with the argument.

Might as well complain that Walmart has a “monopoly” on selling things in Walmart stores.

What monopoly? No Samsung phone I've ever owned has blocked me from installing the F-Droid or Aurora store APK.

Back in the day some cheaper Samsung models came with the Amazon App Store installed.

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