A few days ago, we three easy life pointed out in the relevant content that mobile phone manufacturers have objectively set up many obstacles for consumers to use third-party app stores through various permission restrictions at the system level, "privacy protection", "security tips" and other ways.
Under such "encirclement and suppression", those well-known third-party app stores in the past either simply choose to transform and withdraw from the market, or they have become a minority in the minority, and the living environment is precarious.
So the question is, for third-party app stores, is there no way to break the game now? In fact, it is not impossible, and the opportunity may be in the last two years.
Why do we say that? First of all, if you pay attention to the mobile phone industry, you will know that many new smartphone SoCs in 2022 are different from the previous generation, that is, the underlying design has been upgraded, and the ARM v9 instruction set has been replaced, as well as the CPU architecture based on this new design, such as Cortex-X2, A710, A510 and so on.
Are the new instruction sets and new CPU architectures strong? It's actually very strong. At least in ARM's own words, they (especially ARM v9) are "the biggest update in a decade" and can bring significant improvements in AI performance, security, and multimedia (such as gaming, video decoding) performance.
But precisely because the new architectures have changed so much, they have also brought some new problems. One of the most serious is that among the three new CPU architectures, only the Cortex-A710 retains compatibility with 32-bit applications, while the oversized Cortex-X2 and the small core Cortex-A510 are only compatible with pure 64-bit applications.
This means that when you open a 32-bit application on your phone, it will first be forced to "lock" on the A710 core, which can neither use the super-large core to improve performance nor use the small core to save power. Second, if this is still a heavily loaded, multithreaded application (such as a game), it will only use a maximum of 3-4 CPU cores (depending on the design), and the remaining new architecture CPU will either be forced to be divided to other 64-bit applications (even if they do not require much performance at all) or "paddle".
Neither the Snapdragon 8Gen1 nor the Tianji 9000 is "good at" running 32-bit applications
In fact, for many of this year's new flagship models, as well as more mid-to-high-end products expected to appear this year and next, "32-bit applications" mean lower operational efficiency and higher energy consumption and heat generation.
Because of this, some mobile phone brands have begun to offer a "64-bit app area" in their own app stores, and automatically download the 64-bit version first when the app is updated.
However, mobile phone manufacturers who can do this are still only phoenix horns. For those users who do not belong to these brands, in order to make their new machines less power-hungry and less hot, they have to try to port and install the app stores of these brands, and even manually find 64-bit app installation packages to replace.
Obviously, either way the experience is doomed to be too good. On the one hand, porting and installing other brands of app stores on unsupported brands has been shown to cause some strange compatibility problems (and may even damage the phone); on the other hand, even if you have enough patience to find the 64-bit versions of commonly used applications one by one and replace them, if the phone comes with the app store and does not adapt for 64-bit, it is likely that there will be a problem of returning to the 32-bit version after the application update.
Therefore, in our view, if the few third-party app stores that still exist can seize this opportunity to launch functions such as "64-bit application area" or even "automatic detection of installed 32-bit applications and provide 64-bit version replacement", it is very likely to gain a large number of users.
ARM's official blog post mentions the current positive attitude of domestic app stores towards 64-bit
Further, there are still many mobile phone brands that have not yet adapted to "64-bit" in the app store. So if third-party app stores can effectively promote the replacement of 64-bit applications, then they may even be welcomed by some brands (after all, this can directly improve the power consumption of mobile phones), and even be "opened" by the operating systems of these brands.
Of course, opportunities are always fleeting, and the window for third-party app stores to use "64-bit apps" to turn around is actually very short. After all, according to ARM's previous statements, as soon as the end of 2023, the next generation of Cortex processor architecture will completely abandon compatibility with 32-bit applications. No matter how "lazy" mobile phone manufacturers are, they must completely shift their app stores to a full 64-bit system before then.
This also means that if third-party app stores cannot keep up with, or even make good use of the current window period, then their performance in terms of software compatibility and performance will soon be completely suppressed and left behind by the "stronger update motivation" mobile phone built-in app store. At that time, the third-party app store may not really have the opportunity to "turn over".
【The picture of this article comes from the network】