this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
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Phone makers weren’t allowed to include other app stores by default
The Galaxy store app on my phone says otherwise.
The Galaxy Store was a special exception made for Samsung. Generally, Google is pretty "persuasive" about being the only pre-installed app store on the phone.
What's in the contract between Google and Samsung? What exactly are the conditions for including both stores? Can any phone manufacturer get the same deal? What are the requirements for licensing Android? What number of phones on the market don't include Play Store by default? What % of applications are only in Play Store?
Monopoly is not about exceptions but about market control. Until you know what companies have to do to use Android and function on the market you can't really tell if it's monopoly or not.
I have to imagine the contract that Samsung has is "We're Samsung. We basically ARE Korean technology. We can build our own mobile OS if we want to and cut you out entirely. That's a lot of spying on customers you wouldn't get to do. We get our own app store or we walk. Oh look, LG just exited the smart phone market. Do what must be done."
Does the Amazon store, Galaxy Store, AppGallery, Mi GetApps, and AOPPO app market not exist?
Are those all on the phone by default?
Edit: I didn't ask if some of them are installed by default, I asked if ALL of them are installed by default.
I can't speak for the others, but the Samsung Galaxy Store does come pre-installed. However, Google paid Samsung for the Play Store to be the default action for app installs. So you get both stores and can pick which one you want.
That's just two options from two big players who cooperate, and only on some devices.
The Samsung galaxy store comes pre-installed on Samsung phones, I haven't heard of it being pre-installed on non-samsung phones.
But they're only default on their respective devices right?
As a reminder that was in fact not the comment I replied to.
Yes, depending on where you buy them from. My Samsung came with Galaxy store by default.
Amazon store and Galaxy store are absolutely installed by default on many devices.
So what you're saying is that two of them are installed by default on some phones, but not all of them? Because the comment they replied to was talking about app stores being installed by default, so I'm asking if all those app stores are all installed by default. Because it seems like only some of them sometimes get installed by default on some phones.
I don't know what's on every phone. But I can confirm those 2 are defaults on some devices through personal experience.
And there are also devices without the Play store by default. Amazon products are probably the best example, but they're not the only ones.
Don't get me wrong - Google does some terrible shit. But they're better than pretty much every other major software company on this issue. All the major game consoles and Apple require the use of their stores exclusively. Microsoft requires the Microsoft store to be installed on any modern Windows machine.
Yeah - the Play Store is the de-facto default and by far the most successful on the platform. And yeah - Google likes it that way and encourages it. But so does everyone else. The difference is that Google is the best actor in this area.
Google allows sideloading. They allow other storefronts. They allow other stores to be installed by default by manufacturers. They allow manufacturers to not include the Play Store. And they allow the removal/disabling of the Play Store by users.
Mi app store is, and on Chinese models is the only one.
The jury settled on the relevant geographic market being "worldwide excluding China".