The single best-selling smartphone brand in the world is an Android phone that comes with a non-Google app store preinstalled, I think it's a bit of a stretch to say that they're holding the market hostage. Certainly the Galaxy Store/Amazon Appstore/F-Droid/etc aren't anywhere near as ubiquitous as the Play Store, but they're still there and not particularly difficult to access.
In the US, iOS has 52.4% of the mobile OS market[1], and Android has 47%.
In the US, Apple's App Store is responsible for the majority of mobile app sales[2], and has 3 times the revenue of Google's Play Store.
Apple and Google dominate the mobile OS market, and Apple more so than Google, dominates the mobile app distribution market. Everything else is negligible.
I very deliberately made no attempts to even hint at a defense of Apple, my comment had nothing to do with them (and very little to do with the US, for that matter). I'm simply remarking that Google is not in the same discussion in terms of anti-competitive behaviour in the mobile app market.
I don't see how this undermines the argument that Google doesn't hold the Android app market "hostage" because users usually buy devices that already have another app store preinstalled and also are free to install other app stores.
Can I install those third party app stores on any Android phone?
Also, third party app stores on Android are not allowed to compete with the Play Store on feature parity because of limitations put in place by Google.
The only way to implement automatic upgrading, background installation or batch upgrading/installation of apps is via the Play Store.
> Can I install those third party app stores on any Android phone?
Galaxy Store no (by Samsung's choice), F-Droid yes, Amazon Appstore I'm unsure. But for the overwhelming majority of third-party stores, yeah, you can install them on any Android device in a matter of seconds.
F-Droid is not allowed to compete on feature parity with the Play Store. You can't install apps in the background, do batch installations, or automatically update apps.
Millions of phones are sold that will never be rooted, and by manufacturers who purposely ensure that exploits to achieve root are patched as soon as they're found.
The statement that I quoted is false. The Amazon App Store can do those things on Amazon devices. The Samsung App Store can do those things on Samsung devices. Same with Tencent, Huawei, MIUI, the defunct Motorola app store, etc.
I fully agree that it would be better if user-installed apps could do the same thing without resorting to accessibility hacks. Google has mumbled that it might finally prioritize that feature after the Epic lawsuits, but I'll wait and see. https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2020/09/listening-...
