PhonePe could launch its own App Store in India and here are the hurdles it may face | Digit

PhonePe, widely known as a UPI money-transferring app in India, will soon be rolling out its all-new specialised app store. The company is getting its hands out of the payment business as it recently launched a new app namely Pincode. Now the company seems to be rolling out a new App store for Android users in India.

PhonePe’s App store ambitions

According to an insider, PhonePe, which is already competing with Google Pay, is planning to make its rivalry more intense with Google by partnering closely with smartphone manufacturers, including Xiaomi. The company is reportedly in touch with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and it is expected to be available in all Android OEMs in just a few months after the launch. 

According to TechCrunch, who reviewed a document, the upcoming app store from PhonePe is designed to offer hyper-localised services that are customised to customers’ preferences. The aim of the app store is to assist developers in acquiring high-quality users through multilingual solutions.

The internal document states that the app store aims to offer a “premiere experience to millions of users with high-quality advertisements and custom targeting”. Additionally, PhonePe’s app store will come with 24×7 chat support and 12 different languages.

The company also said that the recent order from the Competition Commission of India permits other developers to create and release their app stores on Google Play. According to that, this would be good timing for PhonePe’s app store strategy.

Hurdles PhonePe’s App Store may face

There could also be a ton of hurdles in releasing a new Android app store in a country where people are habitual in using Google Play. Let’s check out what problems PhonePe could face.

First and foremost is making people use PhonePe’s app store while they already have app stores which they have been using for years and well-known tech giants are running it. For this, PhonePe may have to throw attractive offers like it did with its payment service in the beginning.

It may also have to convince web developers to host their apps on its app store. They may have to throw in some leverage to excite devs.

It will be intersting to see how the said app store pans out.

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