Comment by simonh

That's simply not true, Android outsells iOS, it has multiple App Stores and allows sideloading. Plenty of phones come with 2 or 3 different app stores from the network, vendor and Google. The fact is consumers like app stores, they like consolidation because it makes it simpler for them and a lot of them like the benefits they get from a walled garden. Developers like consolidation too, which is why they have converged on the Play Store en masse on Android. These things benefit them, and the vast, vast majority appreciate those benefits more than they appreciate the benefits of managing multiple competing stores and side loading downloaded APKs.

You can't magic those preferences away. Even if you forced iOS to become an Android clone with multiple app stores and sideloading you can't force people to like those things. You'd just be giving an extra option to a very small subset of techies who have Android now to do that on already anyway. The market has spoken and it likes nice simple well managed choices because that's what the people want.

Why is it that Apple have to make the solution a small subset of people want. Why is that their problem to solve?

Maybe these stores converged on 30% because it's a nice round number and a roughly 1:2 split makes intuitive sense. Consoles, music stores, Steam, mobile app stores, they've all circled around about that number for a very long time. Some have tried around 20/80 to grab market share but it never worked, Nintendo tried 35/65 for a while before going to 30/70. In the end it's natural that competitive forces will tend to a convergence.