[chrisseaton]

They'd have to write extra code compared to what they have now to do this, and then they've had to support that code. They don't want to. Why on earth should they want to spend time writing code to run other people's businesses that they aren't involved in.

Do you require that McDonald's will sell you a Pepsi, when McDonald's want to sell you Coca-Cola? Do you demand that you should be allowed to set up a Pepsi store inside a McDonalds?

[mathnovice]

> They'd have to write extra code compared to what they have now to do this

How would they have to write extra code to support this? They already support 3rd party apps. Your analogies are bad.

[ac29]

They wouldnt need to write more code, theyd need to remove code. Third party app stores already exist for iOS with no assistance from Apple, they are just prevented from running unless the device is jailbroken.

Granted, they might choose to write some code to manage how these additional stores work, but theres no technical reason I can think of that they would have to.