My eyebrows raised when I first saw this news. It is reported by Reuters that 4 big Android smartphone brands, OPPO, Vivo, Xiaomi, and Huawei, are teaming up to go against Google Play Store’s monopoly. The entity is dubbed as the Global Developer Service Alliance (GDSA).
This initiative provides developers a new avenue to market their apps in other countries. There will be an app store pre-installed into your phone when you unboxed it. The current GDSA website is providing guides for how to register an account, and how to uploading & updating apps.
Android Authority also pointed out that there are 9 countries that will be affected by the GDSA. However, upon further inspection, it seems that the brands get to choose which market will be using GDSA. For us Malaysians, only OPPO is jumping to the GDSA bandwagon.
While Reuters reported that Huawei is a part of the GDSA, we are unable to find any trace of the name “Huawei” in the GDSA website.
Competition is good
Yes, having a true alternative to the Google Play Store is definitely a good thing. Look at the PC market for games. I can get my games over at Steam, Epic Games Store, Humble Bundle, or GOG. They all have their own unique selling points.
While Steam is not perfect but still reigning supreme, the other game stores do give Steam some pressure to improve or to change.
The Google Play Store is like Steam. While it is not perfect but still reigning supreme, having competition is indeed healthy. We do have the Amazon App Store as well – which sometimes give out free apps willy-nilly.
Competition is good, but fragmentation is not
Let’s put it this way – if an app is available at the GDSA but unavailable at the Google Play Store, it will give the users a hard time. That means we need to have both to be able to enjoy the sea of apps. Looking at the situation with exclusive titles on Epic Games Store, there are many users would either skip the game entirely or wait until the exclusivity to end.
Developers will also have to limit their app visibility since it will only be available at one app store. But hey, if there is an exclusivity deal for an app developer, it is mostly sponsored.
UPDATE: Xiaomi Global has issued a statement
Within the statement, it’s pretty straightforward.
The Global Developer Service Alliance solely serves to facilitate the uploading of apps by developers to respective app stores of Xiaomi, OPPO and Vivo simultaneously. There’s no competing interest between this service and Google Play Store.
So it seems like GDSA unifies the procedures of uploading apps by developers into their own app stores? I still have questions – but it seems like we need to try it for ourselves before making any further comments.
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