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Image: App Store
In late November 2022, Elon Musk met with Apple CEO Tim Cook at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California, following a public dispute where Musk claimed Apple had threatened to remove Twitter (now X) from the App Store.
The meeting was described by Musk as a "good conversation" that resolved a "misunderstanding" regarding the app's potential removal.
No matter how powerful you can be in tech, as long as you have an App you need to answer to Google or Apple for your existence.
One person who knows very well about the power of these platforms is the founder of UpScrolled, Issam Hijazi, after his app was recently, on 14 February 2026, temporarily removed from the Play Store. The UpScrolled app has been reinstated, and it’s not clear why it was removed.
These incidents highlight the need for reflection on the two stores. Both of them are controlled by private companies from the same country.
Everyone who needs to exist on the most used mobile phones has to abide by their rules. Huawei, a Chinese tech giant, was once a major victim of these platforms to the extent that they had to build their own store, the App Gallery.
The challenge is that this store is not widely used by users of mobile devices. The Huawei experience serves as an important example of what needs to be done to address the current monopoly of the two major stores.
It is extremely unfair that they get to dictate who can or cannot play in the digital space. It is not ideal that an environment that hosts the world's mobile ecosystem relies on other companies.
Digital Stores such as App and Play Stores should be neutral and managed by neutral bodies.
Digital Stores need to be managed in the same way that domain names are managed by an organisation such as ICANN.
The domain registry entity was formed in 1998. It is a not-for-profit partnership of people from all over the world dedicated to keeping the Internet secure, stable and interoperable. It promotes competition and develops policy on the Internet's unique identifiers.
ICANN doesn't control content on the Internet. It cannot stop spam, and it doesn't deal with access to the Internet. But through its coordination role of the Internet's naming system, it does have an important impact on the expansion and evolution of the Internet.
ICANN's role is to oversee the huge and complex interconnected network of unique identifiers that allow computers on the Internet to find one another.
This is commonly termed "universal resolvability" and means that wherever you are on the network – and hence the world – you receive the same predictable results when you access the network. Without this, you could end up with an Internet that worked entirely differently depending on your location on the globe.
ICANN is made up of a number of different groups, each of which represents a different interest on the Internet and all of which contribute to any final decisions that ICANN's makes.
There are three "supporting organisations" that represent: The organisations that deal with IP addresses, the organisations that deal with domain names and the managers of country code top-level domains.
Then there are four "advisory committees" that provide ICANN with advice and recommendations.
These represent: Governments and international treaty organisations, root server operators, those concerned with the Internet's security and the "at large" community, meaning average Internet users.
And finally, there is a Technical Liaison Group, which works with the organisations that devise the basic protocols for Internet technologies. ICANN's final decisions are made by a Board of Directors.
The Board is made up of 20 members: 16 of whom are Board members and four of whom are non-voting liaisons.
The majority of the voting members (eight of them) are chosen by an independent Nominating Committee, and the remainder are nominated members from supporting organisations.
ICANN then has a President and CEO who is also a Board member and who directs the work of ICANN staff, who are based across the globe and help coordinate, manage, and finally implement all the different discussions and decisions made by the supporting organisations and advisory committees.
An ICANN Ombudsman acts as an independent reviewer of the work of the ICANN staff and Board. Digital stores such as App and Play need a similar governance structure if we are to see fairness in the digital space.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Wesley Diphoko is a Technology Analyst and the Editor-In-Chief of FastCompany (SA) magazine.
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