Do ordinary people side load at all? Assuming most people use the phone to do something else, and not for the sake of using the phone, after you get the apps you want/need, ordinary people are likely to just do the same thing/consume the same apps over and over.
If I haven't prohibited him, I am pretty sure my 11 years old son would have installed dozens of pirated games and apps of dubious provenance on his phone.
But I am pretty sure that like any other teenagers since the beginning of time he obeys me, and has only rooted his phone for educational purposes.
When I was his age I had an old Android phone, but I couldn't play LAN with my friends because I couldn't sideload nor buy the game due to parental controls. I borrowed an extra phone from my friend and sideloaded the game there and we could play.
A lot of my non-techy friends have a sideloaded copy of spotify/youtube to get premium features for free. I think they just blindly follow some guide they find on tiktok.
I installed fdroid on a friends phone and they use it install newpipe and keep it up to date, without having a tech savy friend around to download the apk relase from github.
It's crazy how we act like phones are dramatically different than other computers. An average computer user can go to a website, click "download" and then we think the average phone user can't do the exact same thing? It's the same people! They might be used to downloading from one location but it would be laughable to think they couldn't do the normal thing too
(To clarify, I mean apps. Things like GrapheneOS you're going to run into the same issues as expecting my grandma to install Linux. Might be doable but it isn't quite there yet)
I appreciate you sharing, but right now this is a bit too much for the average person.
I don't think it is too much for a motivated average person, but right now people give up pretty easily and people are a bit scared of it. Maybe it is a self-fulfilling prophecy though.
A majority do not, but the article characterizes it more positively:
Sideloading is a fairly popular practice. Our research indicates that 18.3% of mobile users globally engage in sideloading. In some regions, such as the Asia Pacific, the impact is as high as 43%.
A lot of Chinese apps still do. Mostly cause I guess they don't allow Google play store in China (? I think it's blocked, can't quite remember for sure)
Yes, usually when somebody calls them, pretends to be from the security department of their bank, and asks them to install an app to "catch the hacker who just stole $2000 from your account in the act."
In countries where Android is popular (not the US), this is an extremely common scam vector.
Too bad Steam doesn't have an app for actual mobile games. I wonder if there is an agreement between them and Google. I heard there was one with Blizzard from the Epic vs Apple/Google case.
