• Play’s reputation for being full of malware stands directly at odds with your assessment.

    Hobbyists are rarely incompetent. They actually take pride in their work, and aren’t just trying to quickly slap something together for a quick buck.

    Not sure what gave you the impression that most phone apps have gone through professional QA, but I very seriously doubt that they have.

    As for mishandling user data, it’s a lot easier to avoid doing that when user data never leaves the user’s device in the first place. Proprietary apps collect user data for profit; free and open source apps often don’t.