With just days to go before the European Union's Digital Markets Act designates gatekeepers, Apple is allegedly arguing iMessage isn't popular enough to be classified as a gatekeeper service.
tbf, Apple‘s iMessage dominance is mostly a US based phenomenon. In European countries, many people use WhatsApp and telegram. Anecdotal evidence: I don’t know anybody using iMessage.
Same in France. Apple or not, it’s still mostly WhatsApp and a bit of Telegram around me. Only old iPhone users who haven’t installed anything are using iMessage because it’s the default application.
Part of the reason was because of sms pricing on thr earlier days. Sms was quickly free in the U.S, so they used sms because it was there. Many regions used whatsapp and similar to avoid sms charges in the early days. That usage habit still exists today
You also have a lot of movement of people between countries in the EU, and international SMS still isn’t unlimited/free for most mobile plans worldwide.
tbf, Apple‘s iMessage dominance is mostly a US based phenomenon. In European countries, many people use WhatsApp and telegram. Anecdotal evidence: I don’t know anybody using iMessage.
Same, I don’t know anyone using iMessage and I’m deep into Apple circles.
Same in France. Apple or not, it’s still mostly WhatsApp and a bit of Telegram around me. Only old iPhone users who haven’t installed anything are using iMessage because it’s the default application.
I live in the states and I do not know a single person who still uses WhatsApp. Everyone uses iMessage.
Has WhatsApp ever been bigger than iMessage there? From what I heard it was basically SMS → iMessage
Part of the reason was because of sms pricing on thr earlier days. Sms was quickly free in the U.S, so they used sms because it was there. Many regions used whatsapp and similar to avoid sms charges in the early days. That usage habit still exists today
You also have a lot of movement of people between countries in the EU, and international SMS still isn’t unlimited/free for most mobile plans worldwide.