Only teens bully about green bubbles and that’s only in the US right?
It's
far from only teenagers involved although the younger you are the greater your chances. There are great articles about 20-somethings using dating apps and as soon as they go from DMs in dating apps to iMessage, one party will ghost the other if it's not an iMessage blue chat in return. I'm a grown ass adult and have been teased and shamed for my phone choice by iPhone users (who are often annoyed I can't participate in their
proprietary services without owning/using an iDevice or Mac.)
Is the contention that Messages is the main reason for iPhone market share in the US?
1.) Please be precise in naming things. "Messages" is the Google-provided Android client software for both RCS (including E2E encryption) and SMS/MMS. "iMessage" is the Apple-only messaging platform that is universal between iDevices and the Mac based on your Apple account ID. iMessage will also accept SMS messages, but that downgrades the chat such that it only has the capabilities of SMS/MMS. To add confusion, "Messenger" is the Meta/Facebook alternative messaging/video platform and although the market is nowhere near as universal as WhatsApp in Europe, it's probably the closest 2nd in the US market to iMessage for a full-featured chat application. Using RCS is still somewhat rare in the US simply because there aren't enough people out there who both use an Android phone
and use Google Messages, since carriers and OEMs try to force their own SMS/MMS programs to be used it's not universal on Android devices. I use Messages but exceedingly few of my chats are RCS.
2.) Why Apple has hyper-dominant marketshare in the US is complex but there are two big factors at play: It's the fashionable and in-crowd choice to make. There's a tribalism aspect for sure. The whole culture revolves around the iPhone being an object that everyone just
has. Songs, TikToks, etc. all reference the iPhone or its features and pretty much never reference anything else. One way to tell from a distance if you're "in" or "out" of the social norm is the color of your chat bubbles. It's also the case that Apple's ecosystem more broadly is designed to get you to use one item, then use services then use more items and more services until it's the case that you're so deeply entrenched that it's very difficult to get out of the ecosystem.* If you only use an iPhone and no other Apple devices and are not deeply entrenched in Apple's ecosystem, you probably do still use iMessage as your primary messaging platform and FaceTime as your primary video chat platform. Those two alone have fairly significant lock-in effects-- even if you don't subscribe to any other services, or have your phone/services tied to an Apple Watch or Mac etc. If you give up iMessage you can still SMS/MMS with iPhone users obviously, but then the social stigma comes in. If you lived in a WhatsApp country who gives a crap-- you probably use WhatsApp for texting and video anyway. Sub in whatever other app for whatever other country, but in NA Apple is in a unique gatekeeper position in that they are both the de-facto app and the de-facto platform that just happens to be a closed platform.
There's
some lock-in effects to all of the above in Europe, although WhatsApp serves as an escape valve for people who haven't entered into the entire ecosystem yet. If you look at trends, though, you see iPhone uptake increasing in EU countries and with it at least some iMessage use.
* To be fair, Samsung and Google both independently and jointly are trying to get the consumer to buy into services and features that tend towards lock-in, but
most of the time those products and services can also be used on iPhone or using the web on any device so those lock in features are much weaker.
What about in Europe, where the EU may regulate it under the DMA or DSA? Most people use WhatsApp and iPhone share in EU countries is small, often less than 1/3.
Brexit skews the numbers downward, as iPhone usage in the UK is in pretty close accordance with the US and Canada, but yes-- it's "small" if 1/3 of the market is small. It's also a growing percentage of iPhone users in many EU markets. Europe is in the situation where the US was maybe 10 years ago in terms of having vibrant competition still, but the US market should be a warning to the EU -- one where Apple has captured the majority of users and the overwhelming majority of the young and of economically well-off people of any age.
From a DMA perspective Apple is arguing that they're not a digital gatekeeper
for messaging within the EU market for all of the current conditions in the EU market, including the fact that while lots of people
have iMessage, relatively few people use it for anything but the rare SMS message they can't get any other way.
RCS support may be an attempt to reduce DMA/DSA targeting.
It absolutely is a large part of that decision on the part of Apple, and the specific timing of the already-decided action was made to cause maximum PR advantage for Apple and maximum embarrassement to Nothing.
The EU appears to be the only body capable of nudging Apple towards any sort of meaningful regulation-- USB-C would probably not have happened on the iPhone 15 otherwise.
arstechnica.com
