Sure, but what I'm saying is that the new rules won't change things as much as you think they will.
Then why make the rule? It's an enormous expense to the EU, it's an enormous expense to Apple, it's a significant dislocation to Apple's customers. If things aren't going to change much, then why do anything?
The only assumption I can make is that the EU is doing this because they want to see something change, and if the rules they've enacted so far don't affect that change, they'll keep going until they see it.
I don't think the barriers to entry will ever be so low that people will accidentally end up running seven different app stores. I see them likely settling somewhere around what we have to do when installing third-party apps on MacOS, which feels like an appropriately high barrier to me.
I'm not sure people will run seven different app stores, but I imagine seven people might each run different app stores.
Macs have to deal with multiple app stores and managers-- the Apple one, Microsoft Update, Adobe CC, different payment processors and key systems for various medium sized businesses such as Serif, Honest Jim's Online Shareware Emporium for little stuff.
Personally, I hate it. I do everything I can to not buy or manage things outside the Mac AppStore, but it's impossible.
I genuinely don't know what you mean here. The App Store makes apps easy to get. If they can't live in the App Store and they can't get a business model working with sideloading then maybe that app doesn't really need to exist?
I mean that it takes effort for a dev to sell through each portal, and effort equates to cost. With a growing number of portals, devs will start to be squeezed on their ability to sell through them all. Smaller devs likely will have to make choices that mean you'll have to figure out where their app is available or perhaps not discover it at all.
Asking if smaller apps need to exist seems contrary to the intent of improved competition. Tilting the playing field against the little guys seems pretty anticompetitive to me.
I'd assume at least one major one globally. Possibly regional ones if the market is big enough, but who knows.
Probably not that long. These things tend to consolidate down to a handful of competitors pretty quickly. Why does that matter though? Install the ones you need, ignore the ones you don't. What's the crisis you foresee here?
There seems to be a lot more outlets taking my credit card for Mac apps than you seem to imagine will do the same for iPhone apps and the consolidation hasn't happened. It seems the list of names is ever changing...
