Comment by cglong

It's been a very long time since I've used a Windows Phone, but the way I remember it they were just doing the same thing Apple and Google did with the Microsoft Store/whatever it was called. I don't remember if they allowed side loading, but if they did I bet it required you to enable "developer mode" or something like that, just like Google. I doubt an attempt to create anything that competes with them on their own platform would've survived.