EU antitrust chief to Tim Cook: Apple must allow third-party app stores::The European Union’s Margrethe Vestager has met with leaders of US Big Tech firms to discuss their operations in the EU, and with Apple’s Tim Cook concentrated on the App Store and Apple Music.
Nobody is asking you yet. Once it becomes an option I guarantee some apps will decide that they’d prefer to use a third party store over the App Store and if that happens to be an app you use then you are essentially being asked to use other app stores.
This isn’t advocating for or against it, I’m just saying that if you think that this is purely additive and those who don’t want it can just not interact with it and get the same experience they have today then you’re being naive.
Regardless, it’s going to be interesting to watch. Smaller niche apps that don’t need discoverability will probably benefit, since if you need a niche app for something you’re probably prepared to put the effort into using a third party store. Large apps I suspect will go a hybrid model if they do anything at all (use both the App Store and a third party store, with the third party store having a lower price, although I guarantee it won’t be 30% less), and stuff in between will likely stay on the App Store unless there’s enough of a network effect to get enough users to a third party store to make it worth switching.
App developers are unlikely to take themselves off the Apple store it would remove themselves from a huge portion of the market they developed an iOS app for.
But they will find third party stores taking a smaller cut than Apple does. They will pass on some of that saving to the customer or find a way to encourage you not to use the Apple store if they get to keep a higher cut. Like earlier updates and feature releases.
That’s the point. Apple currently has a controlling monopoly on a market. Competition will lower prices for the consumer.
Anti-trust laws exist to do exactly this.
All it will take is a trustworthy company to launch a 3rd party app store. Then maybe you won’t mind.
Some companies like Cisco might just launch a store instead of putting their apps through Apple as they would like higher security than the App store provides.
Apple will also be forced into a competition to be the most secure app store too.
The likelihood is they’ll just play with the margins and do what’s necessary to keep a near monopoly but the possibility of competition is useful in itself. At the moment there isn’t even that.
Well, do you see it happening on Android for any major app except Fortnite?
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