The app Store market is basically conquered by the duopoly of Google and Apple. With the two on top of the food chain, it allows them to control almost every app purchases, app downloads and in-app items alike.

With consumers worldwide spending more than $15 billion in iOS and Android stores, many wants a bit of their pie. That includes Aptoide.

Aptoide is unlike Google Play Store or Apple's App Store as it is not a unique and centralized store. With each user manages their own store. the application used to access the stores is open source.

As one of the largest Android app stores with 200+ million users downloading over 4 billion apps and games, Aptoide wants to solve several problems Google Play Store and Apple's App Store have, that include costly advertising, lack of trust, as well as inaccessibility for both developers and end users.

Using AppCoins, an open and distributed protocol for mobile app, Aptoide wants to disrupt the app business using Blockchain technology.

The communication between the Aptoide app, Etherscan and the Ethereum blockchain can be summarized in the following diagrams:

App Approval

Because both Google and Apple's app stores are centralized, the two have the utmost control of what can and cannot be sold on their stores. Each app needs to be approved and handled by them, often with complex quality assurance with blurry policies.

This can create confusion among developers, and rejection of apps without apparent reasoning.

For end users, having apps on stores that have less transparent app approval can sometimes result the distribution of malware and such.

Using blockchain, things will become more transparent. Developers' reputation can be validated by financial transactions on an auditable public ledger. A dispute system will be created so that token holders can create rankings for developers and the apps they publish.

Advertising

With both Google and Apple acting as the middlemen, the app stores aren't transparent in their policies because of the obvious reason: the two own their respective stores. One of the results, is a more costly advertising.

Developers need to invest in expensive CPI (Cost Per Installation) campaigns due to all the intermediaries involved in the process.

What AppCoins does with blockchain, is removing the middlemen completely by introducing a method called CPAt (Cost Per Attention). This can make CPI campaigns obsolete because it allows developers to directly reward a user from spending at least a few minutes inside an app.

Because blockchain allows the use of smart contracts, developers can be guaranteed that users will spend a required time before they are rewarded. All the transactions will be registered on a distributed ledger to ensure user authenticity.

In-App Purchases

With many apps are developed for a price, many users may not use them.

The reason is simple: billions of mobile users still lack the online payment methods necessary to make in-app purchases. Only 5 percent of mobile users are actively making purchases, and this is a very small number.

With blockchain, AppCoins can remove the barrier. Users can earn AppCoins and spend them on in-app purchases.

With CPAt, consumers who lack the access to online payment methods, can pay or buy items that were previously not possible.

Conclusion

Yet another usage of blockchain.

The technology that is best known to power cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, is meant to eliminate the man in the middle by using distributed ledgers that record transactions between two parties efficiently in a verifiable and permanent way.

Blockchains are secure by design, with blocks that are linked encrypted using cryptography.

For Aptoide, using AppCoins with blockchain can certainly disrupt how apps are distributed, potentially disrupting Google-Apple duopoly. However, since the two not only own their respective market, they also own the ecosystems in which apps are used (Google with Android and Apple with iOS devices).

Even for this sole reason, app stores other than the two may have tremendous difficulties in penetrating the market. But other than that, any improvement to the existing is a welcome move.