> If Apple enables third party stores on iOS after this lawsuit, nothing will change for any of the small app store developers. The App Store will remain the place where >95% of the people get their apps.

I don't think so. A lot of very major name apps will likely immediately jump ship to a new store, or even band together to create the new store. If there's a different store you have to install to get Spotify, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Movies/Music, etc, that has much more favorable rates, then some developers will jump to it. Not all business models can even survive if Apple takes 30%. If Apple lowered its fees eventually because of that, which I think they would, then you're seeing exactly what harm their behavior was causing.

> The core problem is that most users do not want to use different digital stores.

That's yet to be seen on mobile, since users effectively don't have a choice.

> For PC gaming, for example, everybody effectively uses Steam, and most people simply don't buy games that are not on Steam.

This is rapidly changing with (surprise) the Epic Games Store. They're giving much better cuts of sales, and also heavily subsidizing/advertising to get people in (there's a free game every week). IIRC, they also have some (timed?) exclusives that aren't Epic developed. The weight behind Steam is great, and I don't necessarily want another place to look for games I've bought (I also have a bunch in GOG), but I think the competition is very healthy. It actually caused Steam to change the revenue cut from a flat 30% to 25% after the first $10 million, and 20% after $50 million. Epic Games Store charges 12%.

> All smaller companies still rely on a single private company (Valve) to allow them on their store, or suffer a huge penalty in their income.

Less true as every month goes on. There's a lot of independent sellers on the Epic Games Store now. Keep in mind, if you play Fortnite, you have the Epic Games Store. At 250 million players across all platforms, that's a large player base of both PC and mobile users. It's obvious why they're pushing a store, and that's because they are in the somewhat unique position to immediately be able to capitalize on it. If they offered the same 12% cut they do on PC to Apple's 30%, I could see a lot of game developers jumping platforms. Especially the developers that already have PC games so have a relationship.

> I think regulating the App/Play/etc stores themselves would be more beneficial, preferably modifying them to be based on open protocols without having an unnecessary middle-man take a 30% cut. I would like to see all these closed platforms opened up. That would be beneficial to all developers and all consumers.

Someone has to run the platform these are discoverable and distributed through, and they're going to want money to do so. A store vetting what is sold has real benefit. Just look at how crappy a job Amazon has been doing because they held the position that they weren't responsible for what was sold. That's likely to change real quick now that Amazon is required to handle returns for products sold through misinformation (just like every other physical department store).

> I fear that if the result of this lawsuit is only that competing stores will be allowed on iOS nothing meaningful will change. It will be beneficial only to large multi-billion dollar companies, while effectively changing nothing for small developers and having a small negative effect for consumers.

Even if it's large multi-billion dollar companies, that can mean real and immediate change for users and developers. Competition means that they'll naturally try to draw more customers (as that's one of the way they make their millions), so they'll do what they can to draw inventory and people.

Put another way, do you really think Walmart and Target would be quite as cheap as they are if they didn't have to compete with each other, and operated in a vacuum? They'd only have to be a slightly cheaper that the local department stores while being more convenient because they have more stuff. Instead, Target has to compete with Walmart, which is usually really low.