Sberbank, Yandex or VK can develop a replacement for the App Store and Google Play

Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said that the Ministry of Digital Development and companies will develop an alternative marketplace for Android-based applications in the next month and a half. The official explained the need for this by the fact that the App Store and Google Play “may soon make it impossible to download applications in Russia.” Kommersant, citing its sources later wrotethat at least three large Russian IT companies are participating in the discussion of this issue: Sberbank, Yandex and VK.

"Sberbank"

Sber is developing on the basis of its corporate application store for SberStore specialists. With the help of this platform, applications are created for devices in their ecosystem - TVs with Salyut virtual assistants, set-top boxes and speakers SberBox.

"Yandex"

Yandex may revive the Yandex. store. At the beginning of 2014, more than 100,000 applications, and the store itself was preinstalled by more than ten smartphone vendors, including OPPO, Huawei and Nokia. But in recent years, the project has hardly developed.

VK

One of Kommersant's sources believes that it would be most logical to launch a marketplace for mobile services based on the MY.Games platform. The latter, due to sanctions, was cut off from foreign exchange earnings and Western technologies. VK itself confirmed that they were creating an application store for developers, without specifying its bases.

If the App Store and Google Play are indeed blocked in the country, then in the case of Apple, this may mean a complete blocking devices, noted the deputy director of the Competence Center of the National Technology Initiative (NTI). For Google, it is possible to install applications from third-party sources, which greatly simplifies the situation.

Problems of this kind can undermine the attitude of users towards the system in both cases. For this reason, it makes sense to develop a domestic mobile OS that can be installed on already released devices. It is proposed to take as a basis, for example, OS "Aurora", which is being developed by Rostelecom.

In the case of iOS, the introduction of an alternative store is possible only by the same methods that were used to create catalogs of applications for hacked iPhones - for example, Cydia, said Pavel, co-founder of arcsinus Golub.

The head of the iOS development red_mad_robot Alexei Tyurnin disagreed with him, citing the fact that even this option unrealistic: “Starting with iOS 14.4, the community has been trying in vain to hack the system, and it seems almost impossible. With each new update, Apple closes more and more "holes".