(Click on image to Enlarge)

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday approved legislation that, if passed into law, would force Apple Inc. to let users install apps from outside of the App Store in a process known as sideloading. Apple urged the panel to reject the bill in a letter, obtained by Bloomberg, sent on Wednesday to Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin and ranking Republican Chuck Grassley. But it fell on deaf ears.

Back in November, Apple's SVP of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi, made a passionate argument against sideloading at Lisbon's Web Summit as presented in the video below.

Tim Powderly, Apple’s head of government affairs in the Americas, wrote in the letter after the vote: "We are deeply concerned that the legislation, unless amended, would make it easier for big social media platforms to avoid the pro-consumer practices of Apple’s App Store, and allow them to continue business as usual."  

The bipartisan 21-1 vote is a strong endorsement for the bill from Connecticut Democrat Richard Blumenthal, Minnesota Democrat Amy Klobuchar, Tennessee Republican Marsha Blackburn and eight other cosponsors. Yet it still faces a long road to get a vote in the full Senate.

The bill seeks to loosen the duopoly that Apple and Alphabet Inc.’s Google have over mobile app distribution, part of Congress’s push to curb the power of U.S. technology giants.

“If you’re a consumer, what this measure means to you is cheaper prices, more innovation, better products and more consumer safeguards by opening the walled garden so that new entrants are willing and able to compete on values like privacy and children’s safety,” Blumenthal said during the hearing. Google and Apple “own the rails of the app economy, much as the railroad companies did at the start of the last century.”

Blumenthal estimated the value of the app store market at about $100 billion a year.

The measure, S. 2710, would require Apple to let users install apps on their phones and other devices from sources on the web or alternative app stores, a process that’s called sideloading. This provision would most impact Apple. While Google offers its Play Store on mobile devices, it doesn’t bar users from downloading Android apps elsewhere. Sideloading, which Apple has said poses security risks for consumers, would allow apps to avoid Apple’s commissions, which range from 15% to 30%.

For more on this, read the full Yahoo! Finance report.