Portugual’s Aptoide, an alternative marketplace for Android apps, announced that a local court has ordered Google to stop removing its app from users’ mobile phones without their knowledge. The company’s lawyer, Carlos Nestal, described the decision as a landmark in that it marked the first case of an EU national court enforcing separation of the Android operating system and services that run on it, to allow rivals like Aptoide to compete with Google apps. “We believe this may apply to other situations where Google has competition,” Nestal told Reuters, while Aptoide CEO Paulo Trezentos described the court’s decision as “a signal for startups worldwide.”
In a statement Aptoide added that the court decision is applicable in 82 countries, including the UK and India. The company currently claims more than 250 million users and some 6 billion downloads and said it made its initial complaint to the EU Directorate-General for Competition back in 2014.
The Portuguese court’s decision comes after the European Commission fined Google a record EUR 4.34 billion in July for using Android to block rivals in the search and app markets. The company has reportedly appealed against the fine but last week announced changes to how it licenses the Android operating system in order to comply with the EU order, introducing a fee for device makers to access Google Play.
