[toast0]

I have no stats. Only my own annecdotal experience.

On Android 2.x, I remember apk download installs just failing, until you changed the settings; but everything else has been pretty easy. A Samsung KitKat phone I was using recently was even nice enough to have a 'allow just this app, or let it be wide open' checkbox.

About the only thing I sideload that's not on the play store is rooting toolkits, but sometimes it's convenient to get the APK another way (Google Play requires logging in to Google, which is hard to undo, for example)

[zepto]

This is cool, and much better than the impression I had from reading comments here.

I have frequently read that sideloading is impractical as a way to sidestep the store on Android when delivering software to consumers, but that sounds like it’s just wrong.

I wonder which version this changed in.

[toast0]

I don't think it's impractical, but it is more difficult.

Some users will be scared away by the warning text, and it's hard to prepare them with example dialogs, because there's such variation.

You'll need to build your own auto-update service, which (probably?) can't do delta updates like Play can. If you have a lot of users, and you can't dither the downloads[1], you may have a huge download peak.

If you have native libraries, off store downloads need to contain all the versions, but on store only downloads the arch appropriate ones.

If you make apks for download, people will archive them and make them available to others, even after they're obsolete. This happens with play store too, of course.

People who download your apk directly are also likely not to have play libraries or access to google etc. If your app depends on those things anyway, you're going to be missing functionality, or have to implement fallbacks for say, maps and push, etc.

People are still going to look for your app in the play store, so you probably want it there too; at least if it's not something that Google will disallow.

[1] Android really likes grouping background timers, so you will probably experience peaks at local X:00 for all of your users. And local X:00:08 for your users on networks with slightly off clocks