Google-approved Android, at least for now until some judge hopefully shuts down the idiotic "verified developers" programme, has a range of app stores with different options. Unfortunately, Amazon shut theirs down, but charging a 30% convenience fee is a choice there.
Inside of the EU the same is true for iOS, of course, although Apple still somehow charging developers per install makes it hard to provide apps for free.
> Google-approved Android, at least for now until some judge hopefully shuts down the idiotic "verified developers" programme, has a range of app stores with different options.
In order for such a competitor to be viable for use by developers, it has to be installed on the devices of customers, which Google has acted to prevent. Google Play has over 90% market share on Android and has constrained OEMs from shipping devices with other stores installed and used other methods to prevent any alternatives from establishing a network effect.
And now that regulators are getting after them about doing those things, they've sprung this "verified developers" trap to keep it going.
This has the simplest evidence of anything. If other stores are a viable alternative, why do they have ~0% market share?
> has constrained OEMs from shipping devices with other stores installed
Every Samsung phone comes with the Samsung Store. My Xiaomi phone came with a Xiaomi store. I don't know about any vendors that even wanted to ship app stores outside of their own, but I don't recall Google preventing them from doing that.
> If alternative stores are a viable alternative, why do they have ~0% market share?
Because people like Google Play? All I ever read about the app store alternatives that do exist is that people wished they could get rid of them. Personally, I find Google Play to be the best app store around, even compared to iOS' app store, in terms of search functionality and responsiveness. And that's a low bar to clear, given the absolute garbage Google will throw at you with some searches.
With Amazon closing its app store, the only independent app store that has the ability to charge people money has disappeared. That doesn't mean Steam or Epic or Microsoft couldn't set up their own stores if they wanted to. Hell, even with the "verified developer" system, alternative app stores are still possible.
> Every Samsung phone comes with the Samsung Store. My Xiaomi phone came with a Xiaomi store.
Google got caught withholding search revenue from vendors who installed third party stores and punishing them in various other ways.
The phone vendor stores are all useless specifically because they're from the phone vendors, which means they'll be terrible because hardware vendors are notoriously bad at software, and on top of that they'll only be installed for people with that brand of phone, which again destroys the network effect.
> All I ever read about the app store alternatives that do exist is that people wished they could get rid of them.
Those are the phone vendor stores. Nobody wants those.
Actual competitors would be the likes of Amazon or Epic or F-Droid, but Google's shenanigans have meant they all have negligible market share to the extent that Amazon even gave up.
> Because people like Google Play?
That wouldn't explain it. If they like Google Play and ten other things then they would each have ~10% market share. If they only like Google Play, that implies something fishy is going on, because you'd otherwise expect there to be a thousand bad ones and at least a dozen good ones since it's not that hard to set up an app store. Unless it is that hard, and then why is that?
> Google got caught withholding search revenue from vendors who installed third party stores and punishing them in various other ways.
Interesting, do you have a link for that?
> Those are the phone vendor stores. Nobody wants those.
They have the same problem Apple's app store has: they lock you into a particular brand if you decide to spend money. Annoying, I agree, but 99% of app downloads are free anyway.
The real money is to be made with in-app purchases, but because people don't give alternative app stores a chance, they don't realize how much they're being scammed: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/bnbgmf/samsun...
> The phone vendor stores are all useless specifically because they're from the phone vendors, which means they'll be terrible because hardware vendors are notoriously bad at software, and on top of that they'll only be installed for people with that brand of phone, which again destroys the network effect.
The network effect never existed on desktop and Steam is doing just fine competing with the Microsoft Store.
As for software quality, 90% of smartphones is all software. If they were as bad at software as you say they are, smartphones would be unusable.
> Actual competitors would be the likes of Amazon or Epic or F-Droid, but Google's shenanigans have meant they all have negligible market share to the extent that Amazon even gave up.
F-Droid is widely used but only a fraction of consumers care about the things F-Droid cares about. Everyone who cares about open source on Android is served either by F-Droid directly or by another app leveraging the same ecosystem. There's no money to be made selling apps you can download for free elsewhere, though.
> you'd otherwise expect there to be a thousand bad ones and at least a dozen good ones since it's not that hard to set up an app store
But it is hard to set up an app store? The code for the app store itself isn't all that exciting, but convincing developers/publishers to use your app store is. Then things like localisation, payment, distribution, and in-app purchases pop up, which are technical challenges that are much harder to solve.
There's a reason Steam and GOG are essentially the only independent software stores left for video games other than buying games from publishers directly.
The lack of a network effect does make it hard to compete with the status quo, but part of that is that nobody really tries. What the big companies really want is to get the benefits of Google Play without having to pay the price. That's why they sued to "open up" the Google Play store rather than to force Google to make alternative app stores possible.
There are stores that do have the network effect, as they come pre-installed on billions of phones. But, as you said, "nobody wants those".
Trust me, I'd love for Google Play to get a repository feature where you can add and remove your own software sources so I wouldn't need to deal with the laggy F-Droid UI or the unmaintained Amazon App Store app, but the technical hurdles for getting app stores on phones is rather minimal.
For what it's worth, I think Netflix is the second biggest OS-independent proprietor of software apps, as their app comes with an Xbox Game Pass/Playstation Plus/Apple Arcade-style games catalogue available with your subscription. They use Google Play for binary distribution, but payment itself happens through your standard Netflix subscription. Again, a lot of people are angry that this alternative even exists because it's "bloat" but the network is there, ready to be leveraged.
> Interesting, do you have a link for that?
https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/19/22632806/google-epic-prem...
They adopt the Google framing that they were "being paid" to exclude third party stores, but that's a subjective description. If you get paid X for search revenue and you get Y less if you include third party app stores, that's a penalty.
> The network effect never existed on desktop and Steam is doing just fine competing with the Microsoft Store.
Stores inherently have a network effect. To get users you need apps; to get apps you need users. That's a network effect. Which is why, if you can keep alternate stores off of most devices, you can suppress them.
Microsoft, for all their other faults, wasn't doing that, which is why Steam on Windows is a thing but Steam on Android is conspicuously lacking.
> F-Droid is widely used
No it isn't. It's good, but it has ~0% market share.
> convincing developers/publishers to use your app store is.
This is exactly the issue. Google put up barriers to getting people to use them.
> Then things like localisation, payment, distribution, and in-app purchases pop up, which are technical challenges that are much harder to solve.
None of these are that hard. Payments are the most difficult and every company that sells something still manages it somehow.
> There's a reason Steam and GOG are essentially the only independent software stores left for video games other than buying games from publishers directly.
Video games weren't traditionally sold through "software stores" to begin with. You'd just buy them directly from the publisher. Which is the other thing Google suppresses on Android. Try downloading an Android app directly from the publisher's website the same as people do with games on Windows and see how many hoops you have to jump through.
> No it isn't. It's good, but it has ~0% market share
Oh, I'll go tell my dad and brother who have been happily using it to update NewPipe for years. They'll be heartbroken but otherwise unbothered.
This isn't about the tiny percentage of people who are stubborn or technically inclined enough to make it work despite the barriers. It's about the other 99% of people who should have access to NewPipe too.