Why do you find that such an important factor? Is it just about the principle of having a choice, or is there a particular third party app store you consider essential?
It's mostly because I don't like someone else making decisions for me like for example my vaporizer is Bluetooth and has an app but apple doesn't allow such apps anymore. On Android even if Google stops allowing such apps on the play store I can still get it directly or from an alternative store.
This is a great example. Vape apps were even allowed on the App Store for a while, then Apple banned them all of a sudden. There’s a general level of unpredictability with many categories of apps