A Letter From the Founders: Why Blockchain Matters to Aptoide and to App Stores Worldwide
Aptoide was created with a vision: in open mobile platforms, app distribution channels must also be open.
Since September 2009, Aptoide has contributed to a flexible, open and free Android platform by providing a distributed and open source app store. More than 142 million users in 2016 chose Aptoide, they chose “openness”.
However, there are still some worrisome facts:
- Google Play is present in 100% of Android phones (non-AOSP)
- Android phones market share keeps growing and now accounts for 88% of all smartphone shipments and two billion active users
- Google is trying to make Android a closed and monopolist market
A monopoly hurts the Android developers, the Android users, and the Android manufacturers.
Only with a monopoly is possible to impose a 30% fee in such a straightforward service (almost a commodity) like distributing a file from a developer to a user. Only with a monopoly is possible not to share with the manufacturers a share on the revenue made from an App Store shipped in their phones.
This monopoly has been sustained by unnatural economic forces: the lack of trust between the ecosystem players and the lack of critical mass of the ecosystem outside Google platform.
We firmly believe that blockchain can solve both problems:
- providing a trustworthy infrastructure that developers, app stores and OEMs can believe in; and
- generating critical mass by being a standard of the industry.
If the developers are challenged to integrate a transparent In-App Purchases system that is developed once and runs in all app stores with significant transactions volume, better margins, direct payments with no intermediaries, they will do.
If the OEM Android Manufacturers are able to participate to the Apps economy and receive transparent margins, they will engage.
AppCoins protocol is the language that app stores, developers and manufacturers can openly speak.
The blockchain technology will provide the neutral common ground for the financial transactions to happen in the economy, unbalancing the market share to the side of the app stores committed with standards and decentralisation of transactions.
At Aptoide, we are committed with this change and with inclusive, standard and open protocols. Working side by side with other members of the community and following our principles:
- Open Source: the reference implementation of AppCoins components will be freely available under a free software / open source license like GPLv3 or MPL.
- Blockchain projects: we acknowledge that without the work of Ethereum project and other blockchain technologies would not be possible to get here. We will contribute to these projects with research grants, tokens air dropping and event sponsoring.
We foresee that app stores will change a lot in the next couple of years. The change will be slow but firm. Join us on this journey.
Paulo and Alvaro
(Aptoide Co-founders)
Originally published at medium.com on October 14, 2017.
