One reason may be to verify what territory the user is from in order to match it to the developer's permissions. If you have an app that is released only in th

One reason may be to verify what territory the user is from in order to match it to the developer's permissions. If you have an app that is released only in the U.S. for whatever technical, business, or IP reasons, it would be matched against the downloading user's registered territory (as opposed to current location), which obviously requires a logged-in state. [update] also would help the app store keep track of apps a user already has downloaded.