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| India is ready to open its own app store |
A senior government official told Reuters that if India received enough demand from local companies to find alternative products from Apple and Google, they could open the app store or expand existing stores.
There are about 500 million smartphone users in the country, most of them using Google's Android system. However, Indian startups have criticized the tech giant for adopting guidelines that stunt growth.
Paytm, backed by SoftBank, one of India's leading payment companies, has protested the US tech giant's decision to shut down its apps within months due to policy violations.
Google said this week that it will implement a strict policy of charging a 30% commission on in-app payments on its Android store.
Responding to previous media reports, senior Indian officials told Reuters: New Delhi has not received any official inquiries but is ready to consider developing a mobile platform from which applications can be downloaded.
The government official said, before we open a store, we need to know that there will be many users.
The official added that India has a mobile app store that lists over 1,200 apps most of which are backed by the government, and the government may also consider expanding them instead of starting from scratch.
Google already said: In the past twelve months, less than 3% of developers who have apps in their stores sold digital products and nearly 97% have followed payment systems guidelines.
However, founders of many Indian startups are calling for local app stores, for which they are not charged high service fees.
"A local app store is absolutely essential," said Vishal Gondal, co-founder of nCore Games.
"If we had to pay 30% of Apple's spending along with the customer acquisition fee, how would our new business continue?"
(Paytm) did not accept Google's rating but canceled some promotions in order to re-apply them in the store. Company founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma said: Google is a judge, jury and executioner.
Google said: Its policy is to protect users from potential harm and it has been applied and imposed on all developers, not to mention the company name (Paytm).