This sounds like an Apple only problem. Google already allows both sideloading apps as well as allowing multiple competing app stores on Android.

I am really not looking forward to the massive reactionary hate to stuff like this the second a news article highlights even one bad actor. The for-profit "news" outlets will all run similar pieces about how "dangerous" it is now, and will most certainly be busting out charts made by Google and Apple. Which will of course leave out the fact that both companies already have constant issues with bad actors. I don't have anything that uses iOS, but the Play Store has been filled with predatory and fake versions of apps for forever. And it is the mainstream users that are always installing these apps that are spamming them all them time. While at the same time never ever questioning if anything is wrong.

Kind of like how those same people used to just live with a half filled screen of IE toolbars and just thought it was just "new features from Microsoft". Same currently goes for Chrome and Chromium based browsers and the spam extensions. I daily see spam browsers that have been installed and taken over the default. And the folks that are coming to have their computers looked at just never ever noticed. Most of them come in for completely unrelated issues (though some are as their PCs are slower), and are really shocked when I stop and point out how they might have been giving info to scammers.