Apple gets ready for app sideloading on EU iPads – Computerworld

Perhaps they fear losing election contributions if they do.

Let the games begin

Nevertheless, the Great European App Store experiment is under way, and while the number of third-party stores that have appeared so far is limited, this may change. As well as Apple’s App Store, European iPhone and iPad users can now pick between Setapp Mobile, AltStore PAL, Aptoid, Mobivention, and the Epic Games Store. (Two of these are games stores, one a B2B white label app distro service, SetApp is an app subscription service, and Aptoid is an open-source friendly indie app store.)

From baby acorns, new trees grow. But the way I expect this to play out is that as the number of such stores grows, the sector will become more competitive, and then grow a bit until M&A action starts. Once the inevitable market consolidation does take place, it seems reasonable to expect we’ll end up with a couple of stores that have unique USPs, and two or three larger concerns, one of which may (or may not) be Apple’s App Store.