Sideloading on iOS: the US Senate takes a step towards downloading apps outside the App Store

The economic model ofApp Store has been on the grill since the trial opposing Apple at epic. Several countries are already forcing Apple to allow in-app purchases via a third-party payment system and the US Senate may be breaking the second lock in Apple’s “closed garden”, i.e. the sideloading apps (downloading apps outside of the manufacturer’s official store). The Senate Judiciary Committee has just given its approval to a bill which, as it stands, would open the floodgates of alternative app stores on iOS.

L’American Innovation and Choice Online Act could however be amended between now and its promulgation, not to mention that several senators are fiercely opposed to it, both for security reasons and the risks of malware (the same reasons given a few days ago by Timothy Powderly, the Senior Director of Government Affairs of Apple) than for the intrinsic biases of the bill, which would only target certain companies (including Google and Apple) and would spare others whose stores nevertheless operate according to the same rules (no sideloading authorized).