There will be no wild west. If you're in India, you will be using the Indian government approved service. In China, you will be using Chinese government approved services. In Africa, you will be using ECOWAS, EAC, or SADC approved services. In Brazil, you will be using.. well, you get the idea.
Material point being, none of these services will be made by developers outside of those regions. There will be no wild west, what's forming up is very much the opposite of the wild west. It is governmental control with radical reach. Worse, it's forming up to be balkanized governmental control with radical reach.
> In China, you will be using Chinese government approved services.
First of all, this is only about app stores. When it comes to “services” in general, people in China already do mostly use government approved ones; the Great Firewall makes sure of that.
Today, you use Apple’s App Store, but Apple blocks whatever apps the Chinese government tells them to. Is that really such a great situation? Under a sideloading model, at least you’d have the technical ability to opt out of whatever app store anyone told you to use.
As for legal ability, who knows, but any legal restrictions on where you can get apps from would be hard to enforce. And why would phones be any different from desktops, where such restrictions don’t currently exist?
There will be no wild west. If you're in India, you will be using the Indian government approved service. In China, you will be using Chinese government approved services. In Africa, you will be using ECOWAS, EAC, or SADC approved services. In Brazil, you will be using.. well, you get the idea.
Material point being, none of these services will be made by developers outside of those regions. There will be no wild west, what's forming up is very much the opposite of the wild west. It is governmental control with radical reach. Worse, it's forming up to be balkanized governmental control with radical reach.