Playstore(Google) and Appstore(Apple) are major soft power assets of U.S. Govt. we've seen the former exercised effectively against Huawei, crippling its International smartphone sales.
Considering U.S. - India trade agreement has been elusive for a long time due to differences from fruits to solar cells, India would definitely not add App(Play) store to the list; especially now due to the situation with China.
Although there's nothing stopping anyone from creating 3rd party app store for Android, the lobby wants Govt. to be involved for forcing handset manufacturers to pre-burn this new app store. It's certainly possible, as made in India Samsung M-series phones already has all major Indian apps, they might even provide privilege escalation like Fdroid to make install/update seamless. What they are going to replace Google Play Services with would be interesting to see.
Of course it's not going to happen with Apple unless anti-trust issues in US/EU forces Apple to open its platform for 3rd party app stores.
Coming back to Huawei, Playstore denial didn't have impact on its sales in China as Playstore was never there and China has hundreds of local app stores for android (although silicon denial will have an impact there). Similarly, having local Indian app stores does make strategic sense.
But as a consumer I'm worried about the privacy, security implications of a local app store without common International rules and scrutiny; Especially since I have personally seen what some of these leading apps can do with user privacy and security[1].
Just about every single app nowadays vacuums data, so as strange it sounds, I'm back to having Apple replace just about everything, even if Apple's version is inferior.
Oh, I need to use a simple todo app. I guess it needs access to my contacts because there's a legitimate feature for that. It also needs access to my calendar because there's a legitimate feature for that. Of course it needs location for location based todos.
Considering U.S. - India trade agreement has been elusive for a long time due to differences from fruits to solar cells, India would definitely not add App(Play) store to the list; especially now due to the situation with China.
Although there's nothing stopping anyone from creating 3rd party app store for Android, the lobby wants Govt. to be involved for forcing handset manufacturers to pre-burn this new app store. It's certainly possible, as made in India Samsung M-series phones already has all major Indian apps, they might even provide privilege escalation like Fdroid to make install/update seamless. What they are going to replace Google Play Services with would be interesting to see.
Of course it's not going to happen with Apple unless anti-trust issues in US/EU forces Apple to open its platform for 3rd party app stores.
Coming back to Huawei, Playstore denial didn't have impact on its sales in China as Playstore was never there and China has hundreds of local app stores for android (although silicon denial will have an impact there). Similarly, having local Indian app stores does make strategic sense.
But as a consumer I'm worried about the privacy, security implications of a local app store without common International rules and scrutiny; Especially since I have personally seen what some of these leading apps can do with user privacy and security[1].
[1] https://abishekmuthian.com/paytm-says-to-me-that-its-pos-fea...