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A lot of the 'alternative' app stores are either for piracy or for heavily fringe content (think NSFW) or open source only like F-droid. There are also app stores that are region specific e.g. east asia or Russian-speaking. It is difficult to find international, mainstream general purpose app stores.

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That's because Google made it so third party app stores can't install apps in the background, auto-upgrade or batch install multiple apps.

Users expect to be able to do that, so it is a non-starter to run a commercial app store that Google's already turned into a second class citizen on Android.

I think if there was truly a great alternative store, these features would not block it’s initial success.

I think it is impossible to have a "truly great alternative" app store that doesn't include basic functionality that all the competing App Stores have, and Linux has had for decades.

Surely other app stores should be able to compete on an even playing field with Google, and be allowed to implement background installation, auto-upgrading and batch installation of apps.

You can include such features if you are an OEM vendor e.g. Samsung can install their own app store as root and give access to all the above features.

They do and it's quite popular. That's the reason fortnite is still avaliable to all Samsung users.

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