App Store Optimization is, for most people, synonymous with Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store. After all, they contribute to 90% of the total available apps in the market. But they’re not the only ones out there. These alternative app stores seem to lurk in the shadows but each of them has its slew of users. With the looming DMA and Open Markets Acts that aim to open the app markets to third-party stores, their time to shine may be just around the corner. Are they worth looking into? We’re investigating the topic.
I’m actually quite surprised by these numbers. Of course, China has a whole slew of China-only application stores that are incredibly popular, but even outside of China, there’s quite a few application stores that seem to have found their niche, and doing well. If you’re a developer of certain applications, it might be worth it to check some of these more specialised application stores.
And with the EU on the brink of cracking Apple’s stranglehold on iOS applications, we’re going to see an explosion of tailored application stores,
My main store is F-Droid. In addition i am not all that interested in the alternative stores. Such as Google Play.
F-Droid has established itself as very reputable. I would even rank it over Amazon’s app store, if not for access to closed source ecosystem.
The question is: will they be able to make inroads to iOS, if / when they open up to alternative app stores?
If they can, I would expect F-Droid to stay relevant for a very long future.
Likely yes. I don’t see any special reason on why not. Or at least for a similar option to exist.
I doubt it. In general free markets gravitate towards monopolies (due to things like economy of scale, brand recognition, etc); and when one competitor already has an established 90% share the chance of new competitors gaining significance is near zero.
It’s far more likely that you’ll see competition from already established players (e.g. Steam using their existing market share for “games on PCs” to gain a foothold for “games on iOS”, Apple’s store making headway against Google’s store on Android, etc).
Brendan,
I agree, but this is exactly why antitrust may prescribe ways to break up monopolies that go above and beyond normal measures. Although significant antitrust hasn’t been used much even against strong monopolies in a long time. For better or worse modern politics favors giant monopolies over competition.
Personally I would prefer gradual & preventative course corrections the more dominant companies become to prevent excess before it happens rather than having consumers suffering under duopolies and oligopolies.
I think you are right, the long tail will always starve. It’s still important to balance the playing field though so that the leaders are forced to actually compete on merit and cannot simply use their dominance to block competition from the market.
Most the people don’t want to even think about third-party stores because they already have an app store or google play market
The big question will be if Apple continues to allow Xcode to develop apps for third party stores. I could see Xcode being tied to the Apple App Store only as it is a property development environment specific to Apples API’s. Would this mean those third party App Stores would have to provide development tools specific for their own stores to tie into their payment system etc? I’d assume there would be a cost for developing something like that.
I also assume that a lot of developers will have an eye opening experience at the cost of bandwidth to distribute an app at volume. Or does that fall on the Alt App Store providers too, because they are going to have to charge, unless the developer is going to host the app?
At what point do you just end up with a bunch of stores and a bunch of dev’s realizing that they have to pay to play? It doesn’t matter if its Apple or some other store. Someone is going to get that 15%-30% commission regardless. I think Apple has built the better widget here, so I don’t know how an Alt Store could win.
wallyd376,
I think if the market opens up more developers will want to target more portable frameworks and stores, it’s what I would do.
Short answer: take out the barriers and let the free market decide.
Long Answer: If developers want to self host or pay for a CDN, then great. If they want to share profits with a store, that’s fine too. If they feel apple’s store is already competitive, then that option remains. If they want to distribute their official software via torrents like many linux distros do, awesome. None of this is new and the sky isn’t falling.
Healthy competition in a free market will keep things optimized. Curbing monopoly power isn’t just about prices either, that is just one of many factors.