Phonepe’s Indus Appstore will come preinstalled on Nokia and Lava smartphones; company in talks with more manufacturers

Phonepe’s Indus Appstore, an alternative to Google Play in India, will come preinstalled in smartphones made by Nokia and Lava. The company is also in the “advanced stages of decision-making” with multiple other smartphone manufacturers for pre-installation, an Indus Appstore spokesperson told MediaNama.

Such preinstallation deals are important in addressing Google’s dominance because Google Play has been preinstalled on most Android phones for many years now.

“Even if I start running an ad for my app or startup that points to an Indus Appstore, if the phone does not have that app store, it will not do anything for me,” Snehil Khanor, Founder and CEO of Truly Madly, pointed out to MediaNama.

If any alternative app store wants to break Google’s dominance, preinstallation is necessary as users rarely will go out of their way to download an app store if Google Play is already present on the smartphone.

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“A preinstalled app store is extremely powerful because of the power of defaults. Any app link will by default open on these preinstalled stores,” MediaNama Editor Nikhil Pawha remarked. “When I bought a Xiaomi phone in China it came embedded with Mi Store. I had to search and find the APK of the Play Store. But when they launched in India they came with Google Play Store. This was a missed opportunity for smartphone manufacturers selling in India.”

It remains to be seen if Indus Appstore will be the exclusive app store on Nokia and Lava devices or if it will exist alongside Google Play. If it’s the latter, users might prefer Play because they are more familiar with it.

The deals signed by Indus Appstore with Nokia and Lava are just the beginning and Indus AppStore needs more such partnerships, especially with prominent smartphone brands like Samsung, Xiaomi, Realme, and OnePlus. Thanks to an antitrust order passed by India’s competition regulator in October 2022, such preinstallation deals should be easier now compared to earlier because Google can no longer force smartphone manufacturers to include Play Store or make it the exclusive app store on their phones.