Comment by Eikon

4 years ago

Maybe the issue here is making one's business solely dependant on a third party which is well known for that kind of behavior...

4 comments

Eikon

Reply
mnahkies  4 years ago

What alternatives would you suggest? F-droid is the only one that comes to mind for me, and I'm not sure that this would be suitable for this company

  • 2cb  4 years ago

    For their Android apps they can launch on third party app stores besides F-Droid, for example Amazon Appstore, Samsung Galaxy Store, Huawei App Gallery, and I'm sure there's plenty of others... most users are likely to be on Samsung phones or one of the Chinese brands so getting your app on those stores should cover a lot of the customer base already.

    For customers using other phones just tell them download Amazon Appstore and provide an APK download on the site for the lazy ones (but put a note saying using an app store is best to get updates etc.)

    While it does damage business to not be in the Play Store, thankfully Android is flexible enough it's not a total killer if you get into other app stores customers are likely to trust, and they are likely to trust the app stores that are preinstalled on their phones.

    It's also smart to not only be on one platform. Of course if their dev account got canned by Apple they really wouldn't have any alternatives, but it'd be very bad luck for them to genuinely have done nothing wrong but still have both Google and Apple ban them.

    • mnahkies  4 years ago

      That's a really fair point - I had forgotten about the various manufacturer stores as I've never used them.

      Come to think of it, distributing an raw APK isn't even that unreasonable (though more difficult to get exposure) - AFAIK this is how most gambling/bookie apps are distributed.