Govt open to launching Indian app store | Economic Times

New Delhi: The central government will consider requests from technology entrepreneurs to launch an Indian digital application store, two senior officials told ET, responding to the growing outcry against the dominance of US technology giants Google and Apple in the country’s digital services market.India already has an app store for governance-centric apps, which can be scaled up to begin with, said one of the officials cited above. In addition, there is a need to also introduce policies requiring handset manufacturers to preload alternative app stores alongside popular offerings like Google Play, the sources said. Weighing in on the issue, union minister for electronics and IT Ravi Shankar Prasad said in a post on Twitter that he is happy to receive suggestions from Indian app developers on how to encourage the ecosystem. “Encouraging Indian app developers is vital to create an #AatmanirbharBharat app ecosystem,” he tweeted on Thursday. The Indian government “is not averse to the idea” of launching its own app store, officials said. The existing digital store for government apps, developed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC), hosts a slew of applications such as e-governance app Umang, health app Aarogya Setu and storage app DigiLocker.Won’t be Easy, say ExpertsPayment app Paytm is among the few private sector apps to feature on the store. 78439498“Building an app store is like building a shopping mall and the government can very well facilitate it,” one of the officials said while acknowledging that for an indigenous app store to successfully take on Google and Apple’s dominance, it has to be “as good” and “robust”.Global experts are of the view that India is well placed to break the dominance of global technology giants in its digital app ecosystem. “The (digital) industry doesn’t need the government’s help in this, they (developers and entrepreneurs) can just crowdsource it and keep a minimal charge of 2% to run the platform. Nobody will then need to pay 30% to Apple and Google,” said Vivek Wadhwa, an American technology entrepreneur and academic.Government officials said the issue (of overseas tech giants dominating India’s digital app sector) emerges from the fact that Google’s Android operating system has a “98% market share” in the smartphone segment in India whereas it’s much lower in other countries including the US. “The problem of monopoly is very acute,” said the person.