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.
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.
All it will take is a trustworthy company to launch a 3rd party app store.
This really is the key to this being successful I think. Right now a lot of the nervousness around opening iOS is because of the fact that people (rightly or wrongly) trust and have a relationship with Apple.
The people who are concerned about third party app stores really are worried about the implication of having to trust a new third party with their device, their payment details, their personal info, etc.
Put someone reputable behind an alternative and it becomes an easier sell.
