> Second, make your App Store a non-profit that charges enough for ongoing store development and distribution. This gets devs on board
You're hilariously underestimating the difficulty of getting the dev/user flywheel started: developers go where users are, and users won't adopt a platform without the apps they need. Microsoft was literally paying devs for submitting apps, and they mostly got variants of Flashlight apps, and none of the apps that matter. Look at the top 10 App Store/Play Store apps and ask yourself if the developers will bother with a hypothetical non-profit, upstart
I didn’t say it was easy, but what I listed are to me the best ways to reduce as much friction as possible.
AsI recall, Microsoft wanted devs using their proprietary silverlight and c# which required a complete rewrite from iOS or Android. Allowing existing apps to bundle their preferred Android runtime is a lot closer to something like containers or flatpak and is a proven way to reduce developer friction. Ironically, such an app running in wasm would be supported indefinitely while Android apps on Android eventually lose support.