Apple and Google are able to gatekeep what you can install on entire generations of devices, from smartphones to tablets. Their power to gatekeep billion dollar markets needs to be looked at through the lens of antitrust legislation.
Pardon my hyperbole but this is nearing the level of a human rights issue. The freedom to run the apps and services you want to is so core to the way our society works that most people don't think about it. Having one corporation dictate how all apps for the entire world work is not compatible with a free society and actively harms innovation. This is becoming a big problem and regulations are being very slow to react to it.
The Play Store can do background installations, auto-upgrading and batch installs of software, while competitors can't. That's anticompetitive behavior in my book.
Google made it so third party app stores like F-Droid can't even implement auto-upgrading, or background installations of apps. App stores outside of the Play Store and 3rd party apps are 2nd class citizens on Android.
It is similar to how Gatekeeper works in macOS. Developers that didn't pay Apple $100 a year to develop and notarize software have their apps get treated like they're radioactive by Gatekeeper.