Google's play

India's user base can help challenge the app ecosystem

The Indian technology industry may try, with the government’s support, to stitch together an alliance offering an alternative to the Google Play store, which dominates India’s mobile ecosystem — a space that is seeing a lot of heated arguments. Indian developers are attempting a pushback against the Google monopoly, given that over 95 per cent of Indian smartphones operate on Android. The brief removal of the Paytm app from the Play has also led to apprehensions that Google could use the muscle derived from its monopoly to insist on terms and conditions developers find difficult to comply with. Last week,