I imagine it would turn out similar to the game store market on PC. You'd have the various large publishers all having their own stores to get their games/software. Personally, I much prefer to just buy and manage all of my games through Steam... but I do have a handful of games through other launchers. It's annoying, but it would be weird to not allow them to control how they deploy their software.

> on Google, where other app stores are allowed but the vast majority of people just use Google... no one would ever force you to use another app store.

Google implemented several hurdles to drive users away from competitive app stores. They're all but forcing people to use the Play Store.

How so? I can open my web browser right now and install F-Droid in a matter of a minute. I assume the same holds true for Amazon's app store.

By having Android limit the ability to do things like auto-update an app or install an app without additional prompts. If you've ever used F-Droid with say 10 apps that need updates, you're going to have to click through update on each one 10 times.