Let's start with one point. Third party stores don't have to be popular in order for them to be beneficial, because their existence causes the dominant store to take competitive steps to avoid their attaining popularity.
For example, you can install actual Firefox on Android, from Google Play, instead of it being nothing but a skin over the system browser like it is on iOS. Because if they didn't allow actual Firefox in Google Play, it would still be in F-Droid or similar, and that would make the competing store more popular. Since they don't want that, they allow it in the default store. Then the default store remains dominant, but only because it does beneficial things like that as a result of the competitive pressure. And third party apps can send and receive SMS on Android and various other things that Apple doesn't allow solely because it pushes people to use Apple's apps instead and there is no competitive pressure from other stores pushing Apple to allow those competing apps in their store.
But more than that, the other Android stores are actually useful, they just tend to have a niche. Because people are still going to use the default store unless there is a reason not to, since it's lower friction. But the other stores still get to address the cases that the default store fails at. So the fact that they exist at all is proof that they're doing something useful, since otherwise who would sustain them?
> I'm not sure how having to download app specific app stores (i.e. Epic's app store) is better for anyone except for Epic.
I mean, the fact that they're not paying Apple 30% and then passing most of that savings on to the customer is obviously going to save the customer money.
I see no evidence of Epic passing savings to the consumer in this scenario. Unless by customer you mean stock holder in which case the fight is about which stock holders get paid.
Edit: unless you are referring to a temporary PR sale where they were still paying the 30% cut in many cases.
F-droid maintains a modest but robust marketplace of open source software, some of which include things that are not allowed in either Apple or Google app stores.
3rd party stores also allow numerous country-focused stores which arguably serve their home markets better than Google or Apple are willing to.
It's not a large store, I expect, and I don't often use it install things, but it seems to be an unambiguous example of something that benefits users. I bought things via Humble, and then am able to install them on any android device I ever have (in theory).
If they were to add the ability to actually buy things in the app, it would effectively turn into something with an interface like the Kindle app (which shows me both my library of books, as well as a shopping interface).
If we could install apps from Github it would be better because predatory pricing and invasive data collection has the upper hand on the iOS store. Many common utilities are charging ridiculous amounts of money that they could never charge on Mac or Windows because of high quality, free and open source software on Github.
1. Users to have the ability to choose, on the expensive devices that they own.
2. Competition, which drives the companies to try to improve their offering (for users and developers) in order to stay ahead. Competition is healthy and prevents stagnation.
The winners are the users that can easily side load apps without goingt through the Goggle store
It's hard for me to reconcile this, and I keep seeing that 3rd party app stores would be better for users, but it all seems very handwavy. You would think this would be an easy point to prove as Android has had alternative app stores for years, but there seem to be no winners there. I'm not sure how having to download app specific app stores (i.e. Epic's app store) is better for anyone except for Epic.