I think you don't quite understand the current definition of a package manager. These days if you can't download applications from a repository and install them generally with a single action, minimally on the command line, then you don't have a package manager. Android is not capable of doing: aptitude search <whatever> aptitude install <whatever> If someone were to include that particular ability in Android you'd end up with the same amount of overhead as every other real package manager out there. "adb install whatever.apk" is roughly analogous to C:\setup.exe in a command box on Windows. Prior to being able to do your "adb install whatever" you will have spent probably more time searching for the application through obscure websites, and then saving it to your device than if you just used a package manager to do the hard work for you.