Number of apps available in leading app stores 2019
Google Play: 2,470,000
Apple App Store: 1,800,000
Windows Store: 669,000
Amazon Appstore: 487,000
Likely hood all, a majority, a minority or even a tiny percentage of App
developers will do the right thing? Close to zero. How many Apps are
written in other countries, and don't follow requirements across borders.
Its not even a hypothetical, we know this from experience with cellular
telephones in the early 2000s. The cellular industry and mobile device
OEMs claimed for 10 years that they should NOT supply emergency alerts,
because all the Apps would do that. The cell phone was "just the platform...."
Didn't happen. There were a few, very few apps, which implemented alerts;
but default settings is a powerful thing. Almost none of the public
installed or used them. Even when cell telephone companies
isntalled alert apps by default, they failed to maintain them and
often didn't work when needed.
Eventually, Congress passed the AWARN legislation requiring cell phone
operators and manufacturers to implement emergency alerts. A subscriber
can opt-out, but by default all cellular telephone OEMs and OSs must
implement emergency alerts. A decade later, Netflix, Hulu, Spotify or
whatever App you are using on your phone still rarely implement alerts.
Wireless Emergency Alerts are nearly always triggered by the base cell
phone operating system.
Amazon Alexa (echo operating system), Google Assistant (Google home/nest
operating system), etc. are avoiding it much like the old cell phone OEMs
in the mid-2000s.
But eventually I expect there will be a disaster, and lots of people
won't get warnings, and will die. Cable TV operators fought implementing
EBS/EAS through the 1980s. Cable TV didn't have EBS/EAS, and several
hundred people died watching premium cable in the midwest and didn't get
the tornado warnings being broadcast by the local TV stations. A few
years later, Congress passed the law requiring Cable TV operators to
implement EAS/EBS.
Much like seatbelts and car manufacturers, I expect tech firms to dodge as
long as possible.
I appreciate your belief that somehow industry will do the right thing on
its own. History isn't on your side.
I do not expect Apple, Amazon or Google to do something until forced too.
