This is very disruptive to me. Our business chose to use Element because of the privacy and interoperability functions it afforded us through end-to-end encryption and the bridges feature (matrix.org/bridges).
I'm in the same boat here, at least on Android alternatives such as F-Droid exist, however I'm concerned about the repercussions for MDM, as in our case (intune) we go through the Play store.
My largest concern is if Apple follows suit, which could lead to large problems with our employees who use iPhones.
Recently I've been seriously considering finally ditching iPhone because I share the same concern. After all, Apple did the same to another company recently... so we know they are willing.
I don't really want to go to Android, but as was pointed out above, at least side loading is possible. Everyone still can get Element right now, even though Google has banned it from their store. But if Apple banned it, I'd be immediately unable to get it.
You can use an open source community driven Android build like LineageOS or GraniteOS, if your phone supports it. You can even conpletely degoogle your phone this way :)
I’m seriously considering ditching my iPhones for any Nokia dumb phone. But what we really need is a mobile OS that is really free with no marketing BS, ideally BSD derived.
We're in the same boat - fortunately we're a small company so it's not going to be brutal to switch if we have to, but we're huge fans of the privacy and encryption features and it would be a disappointment to have to go back to the old standards of Slack or Teams.
It's surprising to me you'd switch to a new platform because of this when it still works on the desktop. You could install it via F-droid or an APK, use alternative frontend app or you could even just use the web interface.
