Think about how expensive user acquisition is in general. You need to pay a lot for advertising, you need to have a solid product, an operations team to look at analytics and constantly improve the user experience, you need to offer deals that give new customers value, etc. You have to spend a lot of money, especially if you want to compete with Google.
Now on top of that, you have these burdens that make it practically impossible to compete with Google, even if you have the funding, talent, and a better product:
* You need to train every potential customer on how to find and enable the "allow unknown sources" option on their phone (which is different on every phone, and constantly changes place between OS updates)
* Convince them to ignore the many scary warnings from Google about malware and security and all that stuff when they try to do so
* Teach them how to download and install an APK from your website (and maybe how to deal with the Play Protect pop-up that insinuates your app is possibly malware)
And if you manage to do that with enough customers to build a sustainable business (unlikely), you'll still be at a competitive disadvantage on their phone because your store can't install updates automatically, so you need to send users annoying notifications to install updates manually.
You're also at risk of being targeted by Google's competition ~~hit-squad~~ I mean Project Zero, which, if you get in their sights, they will analyze your store around the clock until they find a vulnerability, and then irresponsibly disclose it in order to scare customers away[1]
Plus there's Play Protect, which (at least last time I checked) you can never really get rid of. When you install an app, it will ask you if you want Play Protect to send it to Google for analysis. If you decline, it will just ask you again later.
And if you accept, Google's notoriously unreliable bots could decide that your app is malware, and then block it from being installed on any device. Good luck getting a decision like that resolved.
Comments
Think about how expensive user acquisition is in general. You need to pay a lot for advertising, you need to have a solid product, an operations team to look at analytics and constantly improve the user experience, you need to offer deals that give new customers value, etc. You have to spend a lot of money, especially if you want to compete with Google.
Now on top of that, you have these burdens that make it practically impossible to compete with Google, even if you have the funding, talent, and a better product:
* You need to train every potential customer on how to find and enable the "allow unknown sources" option on their phone (which is different on every phone, and constantly changes place between OS updates)
* Convince them to ignore the many scary warnings from Google about malware and security and all that stuff when they try to do so
* Teach them how to download and install an APK from your website (and maybe how to deal with the Play Protect pop-up that insinuates your app is possibly malware)
And if you manage to do that with enough customers to build a sustainable business (unlikely), you'll still be at a competitive disadvantage on their phone because your store can't install updates automatically, so you need to send users annoying notifications to install updates manually.
You're also at risk of being targeted by Google's competition ~~hit-squad~~ I mean Project Zero, which, if you get in their sights, they will analyze your store around the clock until they find a vulnerability, and then irresponsibly disclose it in order to scare customers away[1]
Plus there's Play Protect, which (at least last time I checked) you can never really get rid of. When you install an app, it will ask you if you want Play Protect to send it to Google for analysis. If you decline, it will just ask you again later.
And if you accept, Google's notoriously unreliable bots could decide that your app is malware, and then block it from being installed on any device. Good luck getting a decision like that resolved.
[1]: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/08/fortnites-android-vu...