App stores are extremely lucrative – and are under attack

Ssince then Since the first iPhone landed in people’s pockets in 2007, apps have increasingly become the portal of choice into the digital world. The mobile devices they run on now account for two-thirds of global web traffic. Residents of rich countries spend about five hours a day, about a third of their waking lives, staring at apps. Around 3.5 billion people use them every month worldwide.

That’s made the app stores that distribute them a lucrative business for Apple and Alphabet, the tech titans whose ioperating system and Android operating systems power the vast majority of mobile devices around the world. That, in turn, has drawn the attention of governments, which are leaning on the duopoly to limit access to unpopular apps while working to loosen its stranglehold over the market. They risk upsetting consumers on both counts.