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.
People in each country used whatever everyone else is using. In the US that became text/iMessage. This was partially driven by the way cell companies charged in the US with free texts but limits on data (iMessage uses data, but it came later).
In other countries the better at the time options won out. We talk to our friends in Europe and Africa with WhatsApp.
That’s not quite what I see in France. Many people use Whatsapp to text friends/family when they’re abroad. But everyday, I mostly see classic SMS texts (or iMessage)
That is not clear yet, since the law does not specify the protocol needed to make that happen. The law forces them to make the messenger interoperable while keeping features like E2E encryption. Basically like ActivitPub with more security / privacy features.
If they stay true to their word, they will force them to implement interoperability and not just force them to give some sort of API access.
So if you install WhatsApp their plan is that Meta must provide a seamless experience in talking to every other person even if that person is using e.g. iMessage
A new protocol for the given reason is faster implemented, more secure and better scalable then just trying to do something with existing solutions that were never designed with something like this in mind.
They turn off iMessage in Europe. Or have argue it’s ability to fall back to SMS meets this. Or the industry invents a protocol that they all use and iMessage gets a new colored bubble.
How will it be a good thing for all Apple users since Apple users use iMessage and don’t give a crap about SMS or RCS?
Maybe it it was someone else besides google pushing RCS it might have a better adoption rate. But by this time next year google will have moved to another message app.
You’re absolutely right, but the knuckle-draggers are too busy with their FOMO to hear it.
iMessage supports a dense layer of features in excess of what’s possible with the RCS standard. RCS is a decent fallback, and maybe progress could be made towards supporting it as a fallback. But the issue is that not even all Android phones enable RCS by default, meaning iMessage would have to have a fallback and a second fallback.
And honestly, the bottom line is that Apple is unlikely to prioritize implementing RCS until their customer base is asking them to do so, which they largely aren’t. The vast majority of the anger towards Apple regarding RCS is from people who don’t buy Apple phones, or from Apple’s direct competitors seeking to improve their products. Apple users (myself included) don’t really care because a marginally better SMS experience is still going to be worse than iMessage, and if I’m really looking for rich cross-platform messaging, I can use any of the dozen widely-used apps that do exactly that.
No they do believe that, because in Europe that is kinda true. You might find someone who uses iMessage if you go to the UK, but in mainland Europe iMessage is the same as GoogleMessages it is „the SMS app“. In modern days it is receiving messages only for most people.
FaceTime is another app that is hugely popular in the US but has almost no users in Europe.
But in the end it is installed on all iPhones so they will fall under the rule, which is not a bad thing.
I don’t know anyone in the UK that actually uses it as iMessage and not just as the SMS app.
I think this goes back to the time of 3G pay monthly SIMs (before the iPhone) that would come with unlimited data, but limited texts. That pushed people to use apps like WhatsApp that basically just allowed unlimited texts.
If what you and others are saying is true, that only a small number use iMessage, then that supports Apple’s claim and there’s no need to open it since not many people use it.
Well that is the problem for Apple, the app is not used as iMessage but it is used as the SMS app and therefore it has by the definition of the law a huge userbase. Also business still use SMS at a reasonable rate so monthly active users as a KPI is also high.
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