What will it take to build an Atmanirbhar App Store
Do we really need one? Or can we make one?
After google announced that all apps selling digital products will be mandated to use google billing (and pay 30% cut to them), there has been a movement by some Indian startups to reign in Google’s unjustified move. Their demand includes an independent App store made in India for India.
It is important to know that Google doesn’t allow any other App store to be distributed from Play Store. In 2014, Google removed Amazon App from the Play store as they violated this policy.
Does that mean no other App store can exist on Android? The answer is NO. There are multiple other ways for third party app stores to exist. One such popular route is OEM stores itself. All leading manufacturers like Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo have their own app stores. Even independent App stores like Indus App Bazaar exists through their partnership with OEMs and pre-bundling deals. Indus App Bazaar has a tieup with Samsung to operate their Galaxy store on some devices.
Another way to distribute app is through any browser (direct APK install) which extremely popular apps like Dream 11 & MPL have adopted (*they followed this route as another google policy around fantasy sports & cash-in/cash-out makes them ineligible to be distributed from the play store). However, on downloading an app from any browser, Android throws a security alert if user has not allowed the browser among trusted sources to download. This could spook some users out but D11 & MPL have proven that it is a viable distribution model (provided you have hot dollars to spend).
Another alternative to overcome the play store monopoly is to build a PWA (progressive web app) and get users to access it via any browser. Recently Paytm announced its mini app store which let developers distribute their PWA/Web apps from within Paytm App. This can get developers some extra traffic in addition to all their Organic, SEO, referral & SEM efforts to get direct traffic to their web app.
But why has no other App store could challenge Play store for long? Play Store boasts of 2.8mn apps while none of the OEM stores have more than half a million Apps. Indus App Bazaar has done a commendable job to get 400,000 apps considering they are just India focussed.
I did a small feature checklist across all popular app stores to highlight how everyone (except may be Indus App Bazaar to an extent) lags far behind Google. No one seems to have invested enough in tech & product as highlighted in the chart below:
Google has announced that Android 12 (release due next year) will allow third party stores. They haven’t elaborated much on this so we will wait to hear more.
My view on the need for an Indian app store:
- App store is not just a collection of apps available for end users to download. There is a huge developer infrastructure behind, which google has built in last 12 years. So a competing app store has to match the product/tech prowess of Google which is well highlighted in the comparison table above
- Indian app store if ever built and if it ever gets bigger than Play store will also have to create rules & policies to efficiently operate. There will be Apps who will violate or disagree to their policies. So merely shifting a gatekeeper won’t help.
- Google needs to be sensitive to Indian context on pricing. Probably a single digit commission on in-app (for developers distributing “only” in India) could be one way to be friendlier towards profit starved Indian startups. India has the lowest revenue generation from in-app purchases despite being the largest in terms of downloads. So Google isn’t likely to rake in much profits anyway.
- This is one product which can’t come up overnight so someone has to keep at it for several years before breaking out. This isn’t a spend more get numbers overnight kind of an opportunity. It can not be a side hustle or a “feature” within an app.
- Some even want Indian government to build one — It’s a bad idea. That’s it.
While we are at this topic, I always believed that Play Store/Android App Store can be a single destination for Android App developers to manage development, distribution, growth & analytics. Why is firebase a separate product? Why can’t firebase & play store merge?
If you are building an atmanirbhar app, then in addition to the above checklist, also think of brining in firebase capabilities (hosting, communication, attribution, analytics) into an App store.
May be a developer’s forum inside an app store developer panel could support the community. Showcase of good developer practices & growth ideas from popular apps may be a good addition. Currently it is lacking in Play Store. A quora like or a stackoverflow within a store for app growth & distribution issues can make life little simpler for struggling developers.
You can also get some ideas from this blog I published in 2015:
I will be happy to hear your feedback on this. Feel free to comment here or tag me on twitter @deepakabbot or mail me at dabbot@gmail.com
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