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EU antitrust chief to Tim Cook: Apple must allow third-party app stores
(appleinsider.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
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.
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.