Eddy Cue wanted to bring iMessage to Android in 2013

https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/27/22406303/imessage-android-eddy-cue-emails-apple-epic-deposition

by embit • 5 years ago

125 195 5 years ago

exabrial2• 5 years ago

They would have captured 100% of the messaging market.

Reminds me of '90s *Nix companies with sales bros wanting to sling around overpriced hardware, preventing expansion of the company in other fronts.

vmception4• 5 years ago

Agreed. They could probably monetize that better than hardware sales too, most likely via Apple Wallet payments and data.

And the whole blue/green bubble pretentiousness would have never happened, which is funny because so many Android users still have no idea that's even happening to them or just assume they don't need to care about anybody that cares about that. (protip: its affecting your life and relationships)

musingsole5• 5 years ago

I quite literally don't need to care about the blue bubble nonsense. It's a great flag for a person I can happily ignore.

ForHackernews• 5 years ago

(protip: its affecting your life and relationships)

Haha, what?

Anyway, joke's on them, I use Signal.

llampx• 5 years ago

The bubble is a US thing primarily. Not because Americans are uniquely prone to it, but because iPhones are not as common outside of the US.

But don't worry non-Americans, people are judging you on the basis of how you dress, eat, walk and talk and deciding silently whether to let you in their social circle or not.

madars• 5 years ago

Sure, not using iMessage means missing out on certain social interactions but so does not using Facebook, for example. Life can't be played optimally.

rovek• 5 years ago

And the whole blue/green bubble pretentiousness

Honestly, reading the rest of the comments in this thread to this effect, it's terrifying that the runaway success of a single company can so degrade the fabric of personal relationships this way.

The only people I've met who use iMessage have been Americans and the Americans I've met that live in the UK use WhatsApp or Messenger as their primary local comms, though frequently iMessage with friends in the US. I wonder why it is that iMessage hasn't enjoyed the same dominance here, even when the iPhone has. (45% iPhone in the US vs 40% in the UK)

lemonade5117• 5 years ago

Doesn't the green bubble mean that it's sent over SMS? I'm pretty sure the reason it exists isn't because of some "pretentiousness"

aryonoco2• 5 years ago

I'm in Australia, and here iPhones have about 50% of the smartphone market, with the other half being Android of course.

I obviously know many iPhone users, including my wife and many close friends. I know of no one who uses iMessage. Here everyone uses Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp (and to a lesser extent Telegram and Signal).

Is this iMessage fascinating a US thing? Why?

monic2• 5 years ago

The blue green bubble is no more pretentious than letting people know if your messages are encrypted.

It’d would’ve been inflammatory but accurate and informative to put an insecure padlock for unencrypted messages which may be read by your carrier.

MomoXenosaga3• 5 years ago

Anyone who has the audacity to send me an SMS in the year of our Lord 2021 has my full and undivided negative attention. WhatsApp or go home.

exabrial2• 5 years ago

Agree. One only has to look at the success of WeChat in China to see how this would play out.

bscphil2• 5 years ago

so many Android users still have no idea that's even happening to them or just assume they don't need to care about anybody that cares about that. (protip: its affecting your life and relationships)

To be as blunt as I know how to be: good. I really hope that anyone inclined to treat people that way goes all the way and cuts me out of their life completely. I don't need or want friends like that, and I've had no trouble making friends (including iPhone users) who aren't so absurdly shallow as to treat people differently based on the color of their message in a fucking texting app.

In other words, I really do hope you're right about this and it's affecting my life and relationships, because the only way it could possibly affect them is positively by cutting assholes out of my life.

afavour4• 5 years ago

Depends on location, IMO. I was an Android user for years (since the Nexus One!) and the vast majority of my contacts were on iOS. My lack of iMessage was a constant frustration and I would have signed up in an instant.

But I'm in the US, which has a disproportionately high amount of iOS users. Across the rest of the world iMessage would be competing with WhatsApp and its existing network (something the e-mails in the article note) and I think it would have been an uphill struggle.

dan-robertson• 5 years ago

Strongly agree. The US is weird in two ways:

1. iOS being uncommonly popular (in other words: the US is weirdly rich compared to even most developed countries)

2. People texting a lot (maybe other countries’ carriers used to just make texting too expensive?)

Outside the US, people more commonly use messaging apps, and there is less peer pressure to be on iMessage as it is less likely for someone (in a certain social class…) to have a big majority of iOS-using peers. I had never even heard the term ‘green-texter’ until I went to the US

mcphage2• 5 years ago

They would have captured 100% of the messaging market

I'm not sure that would have helped Apple in anti-trust battles.

Longhanks• 5 years ago

No. In 2013, WhatsApp was already the de facto standard messenger in Europe. See https://web.archive.org/web/20140412064444/http://blog.whats...

Is this the typical american point of view where the US == the world?

imwillofficial2• 5 years ago

I don’t know why you’re taking this needlessly snide tone. It seems obvious that GP thinks that iMessage would have dominated, even WhatsApp in Europe.

r00fus• 5 years ago

They would have captured 100% of the messaging market.

Isn't that against their DNA? Apple doesn't like to capture market share - they instead go for high profit share regardless of marketshare.

High profit share but median market share helps to avoid antitrust regulatory action.

pwthornton• 5 years ago

I don't know. Android is not exactly a place with a lot of paid software. No way Apple would make it free for Android and ad supported. Maybe they could have come up with some kind of iCloud Android bundle, and maybe it would have done well, but I am not convinced there is a massive market for a paid consumer messaging service.

cglong2• 5 years ago

OP doesn't sound like they were arguing that iMessage should be a paid service, just that Apple could've captured most of the market.

RandallBrown• 5 years ago

I think making iMessage free on Android and then using it as a tool to migrate people from Android to iPhone would more than pay for itself.

alberth• 5 years ago

Reminds me of BBM (blackberry messenger). Only available on their hardware.

opencl• 5 years ago

They did eventually release it for Android and iOS, but only after they had declined into almost complete irrelevance.

kevincox2• 5 years ago

I mean the logic is obvious. If you are popular enough you want to keep the platform exclusive. If you aren't then it makes sense to go multi-platform.

BlackBerry thought their platform was strong enough and BBM would pull everyone else in. They were of course wrong.

It seems like Apple is strong enough to keep iMessage useful even if it is platform limited, and surely some people are buying iPhones for the status-symbol of Green Bubbles (or Blue, I can't remember I don't use iMessage).

Of course every platform wants to think they are strong enough to pull this trick, admitting otherwise is very difficult. Of course by the time it is obvious that you aren't strong enough it is probably too late.

indymike• 5 years ago

Funny Blackberry story. The .jobs top level domain was launched around the time RIM was really struggling. .jobs was one of the first gtlds that wasn't .net, .com or .edu. The management team at RIM wanted a .jobs domain for their career website. They didn't buy "Blackberry dot jobs" they bought... the other one. The company I worked for provided career website software. The meeting where we tried to explain why RIM and .jobs was a bad idea was a classic.

northerdome2• 5 years ago

The bubbles are such a stupid status symbol.

I hate the conspiracy theory that Apple did it intentionally to make iPhone users hate Android. The original iPhone had all green bubbles. The blue was only to differentiate.

slfnflctd3• 5 years ago

Like many others, I switched from iOS to Android during a time when it (edit: this transition process) was most fraught with very unexpected failure modes. I remember being absolutely incredulous that anyone thought this experience reflected positively on Apple in any way-- it seemed incompetent at best, and had a strong stink of maliciousness to boot.

I've always seen this as major bungle on their part, and it's one of many reasons I will never go back to their not-so-safe walled garden by choice.

ibero• 5 years ago

i honestly don’t remember what period of time you are referring to. could you elaborate on examples from the period of time iOS was “fraught with very unexpected failure modes?”

edit: i just saw your edit to specify iMessage the app.

slfnflctd3• 5 years ago

I'm referring to iMessage specifically causing tons of unnecessary problems when switching from an iPhone to an Android phone. This was over 5 years ago so I have no idea what's fixed or isn't now, but I do still occasionally have problems when an iPhone user tries to message me as part of a group.

These were all intermittent: Messages were lost or delayed for very long periods (going both ways), groups were completely broken, I couldn't tell who was messaging me because they were assigned some random source number (which I think also happened both ways), and images were compressed to illegibility.

Some people I seemingly just couldn't text with at all.

Here is just one small thread of thousands about it: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6750172 [Not the best example, but I'm having trouble tracking down the posts I remember browsing back when I made the switch.]

It was a complete mess, experienced by many users, and it was entirely Apple's fault.

Sodman• 5 years ago

For folks switching to iOS for the first time from Android the experience can be incredibly frustrating, if you don't know that you're supposed to do things "The Right™" way.

Examples from personal anecdotes include:

- My first Macbook pro several years ago was the cheapest one at the time, and basically got stuck in a boot loop when I opted out of creating an apple ID on setup. Needed to boot into safe mode and factory reset it to start again.

- Setting up an iPad (in the last year) for a first time iOS user, required two 2FA challenges and needed the apple ID password ended no fewer than 7 times in the first 5 minutes of operation. The App Store didn't work for a few minutes for reasons unknown, and then with no changes, started working. (I'm guessing the creation of a new apple ID takes a few minutes to propagate to the app store or something?)

I'm sure everything goes smoothly when you just log in with an apple account and import all of your existing settings from iCloud etc, but if you're jumping in for the first time and press the wrong buttons it's rough!

decafninja2• 5 years ago

I feel like I'm the only iPhone user that barely makes use of iMessage. All my chat communications is done via Google Hangouts (or whatever they call it these days), WhatsApp, or Kakao (I'm Korean). I think I have exactly one friend who I use iMessage with.

Then again, half my friends are Android users, so...

dav43• 5 years ago

Likewise. Almost all my circles (90%) are iPhone based in Australia and Singapore. All WhatsApp, Signal.

sjg007• 5 years ago

imessage should still work?

girvo• 5 years ago

Curious. 95% of my circle are Australian, 80% of them use iPhones, and absolutely all of us use iMessage for nearly all text communication.

Signal is used for the iPhone to Android communication sometimes, but honestly it’s mostly just SMS.

rodiger• 5 years ago

In the US market it's much more dominant.

ImprovedSilence• 5 years ago

Yeah. Im us based, and have two different friend groups that i text with daily. One group all has iphones and we use imessage. The other group recently landed in signal, but has been all over the place over the years, from email, to g chat, to hangouts, then tried whats app, then back to hangouts....

peruvian• 5 years ago

Completely depends on where you live AND also your social bubble. That's why these threads are often repetitive in nature. Everyone's different.

Here in NYC, I can count the number of Android users I've met in one hand... but I know that tons of people have Android phones. Most chatting happens on iMessage and maybe Instagram chat (people seem to exchange IG usernames rather than phone numbers nowadays).

decafninja2• 5 years ago

I'm actually in NYC too. Definitely see tons of Androids here.

I've never seen or heard of people exchanging IG information - is that really a thing? Maybe I'm getting old.

intergalplan• 5 years ago

Then again, half my friends are Android users, so...

That's the reason. Same reason my friend group is all on WhatsApp. If we all had iPhones, we'd just use iMessage.

naosouumapessoa• 5 years ago

Well, another datapoint. Here in Brazil, my family and friends all use iphones but no one uses imessage. Just whatsapp.

asiachick2• 5 years ago

Similar, long term iPhone user, zero messages via iMessage. For me it's 97% FB Messenger, 2% Whatsapp, 1% Line, 0.1% Google Messenger

mcphage2• 5 years ago

The line of questioning is likely to play a significant role in Epic’s antitrust lawsuit, which argues that iOS app store exclusivity represents an illegal use of market power. Epic has made clear in previous filings that it plans to make iMessage exclusivity part of that argument, citing a 2016 email from Phil Schiller that argues iMessage expansion “will hurt us more than help us.”

This seems weirdly irrelevant. If Epic is arguing that not allowing other app stores onto iPhones is hurting consumers, I don't understand the relevance of Apple software on non-Apple phones. I mean, say Epic wins their case, and so Apple needs to support side-loading. The court still can't force Apple to port iMessage to other devices.

codq• 5 years ago

Not only did Apple miss an opportunity to own global messaging, Google could have done the same if they had designed Allo with SMS fallback similar to iMessage.

I have no idea what they were thinking with Allo, but they blew one of the easiest layups I’ve ever seen.

lotsofpulp2• 5 years ago

They were far too late with Allo. The time to get it right was when Whatsapp came around.

I like iMessage because it sends full quality media, but WhatsApp fills all the other gaps.

criddell2• 5 years ago

I don't understand how Google wasn't able to figure out messaging. That has to be an embarrassment inside Google.

slig• 5 years ago

For whom? They don't seem to care about anything anymore.

SirSourdough• 5 years ago

Maybe they missed a chance to own global messaging, though I’m not sure that’s true given the number of competing messaging platforms, but iMessage being a walled garden has sold a shitload of devices for Apple and served as a major way of locking people into their ecosystem. It’s a major differentiator from Android/PC products, and it’s something I’ve heard mentioned a lot when people are choosing between Android and iOS or between PC laptop vs MacBook.

I think people are underestimating the value that Apple has derived in terms of device sales from not expanding iMessage to other platforms, and device sales are worth a lot of money compared to new messaging-only users.

themacguffinman• 5 years ago

Because of antitrust concerns. It amuses me every time this suggestion resurfaces here because this community is most familiar with anti-Google pressure when it tries to use its market share like this.

remir• 5 years ago

Allo was doomed to fail.

RCS is the evolution of SMS, is standardized and should be what the industry uses. Carriers mostly adopted it I think, but as expected, the situation is a mess. Bell, for example, went with Samsung for their RCS infrastructure and for some reasons, they don't allow sending RCS messages to other carriers.

Google decided to bypass carriers entirely, but you have to use the Google Messages app to use RCS. So if you use another texting app, it won't work.

Again, the whole thing is a mess.

northerdome2• 5 years ago

No one wanted iMessage when it came out. Making it opt out on iPhones and defaulting made people try it and they started to prefer it when they realized. The opt out was Apple's key to success. Google should have done the same on Android.

dawnerd• 5 years ago

I still want a windows client, or even a web version.

asdfasgasdgasdg2• 5 years ago

It would be a fantastic outcome of this case if the use of closed standards and lack of integration APIs in a high-market-share product gave rise to a presumption of monopolistic practices. That is obviously what drives the lack of integration points with iMessage and other messaging services, but right now there is no consequence. If it were codified, even in a court precedent, it might be enough to get these systems to start playing nicely again. Remember the days when you could write a client that would connect to most online chat services? I want those days back.

(To be clear, I guess this is wishful thinking. But I would be happy if it came to pass.)

Even better would be a requirement to provide interoperability APIs at a legislative level, but I guess that will be a long time coming.

donarb• 5 years ago

I find it ironic in a lawsuit over Apple's supposed dominance, that Epic is claiming that executives shot down a plan that as Cue puts it "that iMessage should expand to Android to cement Apple’s hold on messaging apps".

temp6672• 5 years ago

The truth is at the time iMessage would have DOMINATED.

End to end encryption. Proper MMS. Etc.

imwillofficial2• 5 years ago

For those saying Apple missed the boat on owning global messaging, I ask you:

Who says Apple wanted to own global messaging back then?

tootie• 5 years ago

The instant messaging market is such an utter failure of competitive market economics. There hasn't been a single worthwhile innovation in like 25 years yet there is intense competition over who owns the proprietary protocols. Text vs data is also an entirely contrived competition.

krrrh4• 5 years ago

End to end encryption was a huge innovation first widespread with iMessage, then Signal, and even WhatsApp and eventually (optionally) on FB messenger and Telegram. Now it's table stakes.

FraaJad• 5 years ago

WhatsApp happened and no one cares about iMessage outside US.

-- sent from my iPhone

jgalt212• 5 years ago

so do Brian Acton and Jan Koum send Craig Federighi the world's largest fruit basket every Christmas?

emsy2• 5 years ago

The reason for not bringing iMessage to Android was because parents could just buy cheap Android handsets for their kids. First of all, why not create a product for that niche (nevermind, we're talking about Apple). But what actually bothers me is the weak mindset. I remember when Apple didn't have such concerns because they were certain that they have the best product and people would buy for that reason. This is going on across the board at Apple it'll eventually lead to its IBMification.

cududa2• 5 years ago

I’m not sure your assessment is right. They let iPods run on windows and made a janky version of iTunes for windows so it was operable, but I don’t think they ever treated iTunes for Windows as a priority. So, sure they knew iPod was best in class, and people bought the product for use with either platform.

But where’s the iMessage analogy? It’s not like all of Android would get better because of iMessage, they couldn’t actually sell anything based on an imesssge port, so where’s there incentive? Where’s the example of them absconding on a principle of “best product wins” when they aren’t selling a product associated with the cross platform access?

emsy2• 5 years ago

Having iOS as a first class citizen and accepting the fact that Android users exist and your paying customers don't have to bother with the fragmented messenger landscape. All while creating the de-facto standard for smartphone messaging (that is now Whatsapp).

null0pointer2• 5 years ago

The distinction here is that the iPod/iPhone is the product, while iMessage is merely a feature.

By creating iTunes for Windows they were expanding the potential customer base for iPods. By supporting iMessage on Android they would not be expanding the potential customer base for iPhone. If anything they would be shrinking it if they think iMessage is a compelling enough feature for people to switch from Android to iMessage.

js24• 5 years ago

I am concerned [that] iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove an obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones.

We're an iPhone family, but damn is that lame. How about: make the best product. Don't coerce people into buying an iPhone.

It drives me crazy how fractured messaging has become. Here's a recent example. My non-technical aunt tried to send a group iMessage to my wife and me. For me, she used an email address tied to my iMessage account. But for my wife, she used her Google Voice #. Now what you need to understand is that iMessage allows you to associate one or more email addresses with your account, but only a single phone #, which has to be your carrier-assigned #.

So now she's trying to send an iMessage to my email address (which would have shown up in blue) and my wife's Google Voice # (which would have shown up in green).

Well, here's what apparently happened. iMessage handed this off as an MMS to Verizon. Verizon's MMS gateway sent me the message via email, as a text attachment. My wife got the message in the Google Voice app on her phone.

What an f'ing mess.

I've turned off "Send as SMS" and "MMS Messaging" on my iPhone so I don't make this same stupid mistake.

I'd use WhatsApp for everything, but, Facebook. (I tried Signal. I found it to be pretty sub-par for everyday messaging.)

jbigelow76• 5 years ago

We're an iPhone family, but damn is that lame. How about: make the best product. Don't coerce people into buying an iPhone.

But iMessage isn't the product, it's a feature of the product. They think by not letting those features be available on other platforms they are creating the best product. You can't make the best product while simultaneously commoditizing your differentiators.

tw04• 5 years ago

They are repeating RIM's mistakes. It fascinates me they haven't actually jumped on the services train, they just started charging a monthly fee for the walled garden while still focusing on selling product and called it a services play.

asdfasgasdgasdg2• 5 years ago

I think engendering network effects intentionally is pretty monopolistic. You can't just say, "Hey, but we're not making money from it directly" and get away with that.

js24• 5 years ago

They think by not letting those features be available on other platforms they are creating the best product.

No, they don't think that. Their refusal to extend iMessage to Android, to not even provide an iMessage API that would allow Google or third-parties to extend iMessage to other platforms has nothing to do with creating the best product. It's coercion, just as I quoted Federighi writing.

Just above that line he wrote "to get users to switch social networks we’d need more than a marginally better app."

Well then, make it insanely better. I happen to disagree with him though. I think he sold Apple short. I think even a marginally better messaging app would be sufficient.

Ultimately what I would like of Apple is for them to provide the best experience on their own devices, but also to provide interoperability with their services for third parties to extend to non-Apple devices.

BTW, it's interesting to see that they are extending to non-Apple hardware with AppleTV+. They've even paid Roku recently to get an AppleTV+ button on the Roku remote.

adrr• 5 years ago

Cost of iMessage is built into the price of the iPhone and other apple products. Why would they pay to develop and maintain it for other devices? Apple doesn’t monetize their data like other messaging services/social networks. If apple charged $3/m for iMessage on Android would you pay it?

room5004• 5 years ago

Yes. I prefer Android phones, but I don't want my choice of phone to impact the communication between my friends and family.

The only reason I consider getting an iPhone is for iMessage. I would gladly pay a monthly fee so I could use the phone I want AND communicate freely with the people in my social circles.

ssabetan• 5 years ago

but only a single phone #

I believe you can have multiple phone numbers associated with your iCloud account if they are a physical number. This is assuming you have a phone that's capable of dual-sim or if you have a second iPhone linked to your iCloud account. The latter is what I do when to make myself available when traveling abroad.

microtheo• 5 years ago

I have a dual sim iPhone 11. Everytime I switch off the main sim and use the other on abroad, imessage breaks and I have to use WhatsApp. Never manages to link two phone numbers, less so to use it without the correct sim...

president• 5 years ago

make the best product. Don't coerce people into buying an iPhone.

I think this is what we all wish for but business is warfare and corporations will do whatever it takes to "capture" the market.

majjam• 5 years ago

Would you mind elaborating on why Signal was sub-par? I use it as my main messenger and find it to be fine. There have been issues where older clients couldn’t receive messages and needed to upgrade their phones to fix. And migrating to a new phone is fragile, but everyday messaging seems ok to me.

Edit: honestly the challenge is getting other people to install it

Valkhyr• 5 years ago

Can't speak for the poster you are responding to, but as someone who also uses Signal for a portion of my social circle, here's my big one: Signal is tied to a phone number, so I can't use it from multiple devices/platforms (unless I want to show up as a different entity from each of them).

This alone is the reason why I personally would not freely choose Signal, and only use it because some of my friends insist :-\

js24• 5 years ago

It's been a while. I should probably re-install it and give it a fresh chance. My recollection is that the UI was sluggish and that the app was poorly integrated with iOS (e.g. I don't think it had a sharing extension).

dmak2• 5 years ago

You found Signal very sub-par for everyday messaging when compared to WhatsApp? May I ask how so? Because I found those 2 of the many I use to be very similar if not the same.

nvr2193• 5 years ago

Reposting something I posted a few months ago:

The biggest reason is larger user base. But here are two things I do in WhatsApp that I can't do in Signal:

- Share live location. If I need to meet up with somebody, or let someone know how far away I am and when I'm arriving, I use share live location. "Share for 1 hour." In Signal you can share your location at a moment in time but it doesn't update.

- Broadcast messages ("mass text" basically). In WhatsApp I can send a message to a list of people without the people on the list seeing each other (to them it looks like I messaged them 1:1). In Signal I would have to use a group and all the members would see each other.

And now to add:

- Message history across apps. When I install the signal desktop app, it doesn't pull the message history with it.

js24• 5 years ago

It's been awhile since I tried Signal. At the time, the UI was sluggish and I don't think it even had a share extension. I'll give it a fresh try.

nvr2193• 5 years ago

I agree with everything you said. WhatsApp is the best right now and that makes me very sad.

molszanski• 5 years ago

I use all messengers and don’t care. But tbh telegram is my favorite one. Slickest, cleanest, fast with tons of features and good UX

MomoXenosaga3• 5 years ago

Simply due to the numbers of users. Getting to 2 billion users is an insurmountable obstacle no matter how good your app is.

sephamorr• 5 years ago

I still have this problem where my mom's iMac will occasionally send a SMS (sent via macOS Messages and delivered via her iphone) to the email address in my contact, rather than my phone number. Somehow it thinks that xxxx@yyy.com is a phone number, but +1xxxxxxxxxx isn't. Tmobile then takes the SMS and forwards it to xxxx@yyy.com, as happened to you. So frustrating at how hard this is for Apple to get right. I don't even have iMessage, but I guess that's the point -- interoperability, where it exists with Apple products, will be usable enough to get started but just buggy enough to be infuriating.

spotman• 5 years ago

Telegram is one potential answer. I find it to be the fastest messaging platform , and super reliable. Not to mention their desktop apps are not bloated, and message history, drafts, etc sync really well. (note - there is also a secret mode that works like signal, that also doesn't sync message content, which is parity with signal)

ksec• 5 years ago

You just described what that bloody pile of crap called iMessages is doing all the time and is somehow extremely popular in US.

It still baffles me why US has always had the different default IM compared to rest of the world. When the world moved from ICQ to MSN, they are still with AIM. When the world went with WhatsApp, no one in US knew WhatsApp until Facebook announced their $16B acquisition.

And what's worst is Apple didn't even care to improve iMessage.

krrrh4• 5 years ago

‘Do we want to lose one of the most important apps in a mobile environment to Google?’

Little did Cue know how determined Google was to fumble messaging over the next decade.

MomoXenosaga3• 5 years ago

And WhatsApp was a start-up of less than 50 people that took over communication of entire nations in a matter of months. Who saw that coming? Biggest WTF since Napster.

krrrh4• 5 years ago

It has to be the highest acquisition-dollar / employee of all time. I doubt anything even comes close. And isn’t it true that they were profitable on their $1 per year subscription scheme?

I’d love to read a book about how it all came together. Especially something that dives into the speculation I’ve had that their relationships and zero-rating contracts with telcos in developing countries and how that could be leveraged into internet.org and establishing FB in emerging markets was a bigger driver for getting the deal done than the idea of owning IM. Does anyone know if there are any interviews with the team that negotiated the zero-rating deals because seems like excellent execution before almost anyone stateside realized what the play was.

beowulfey• 5 years ago

More relevant to the article—does anyone know what Epic plans to argue from this finding? Honestly, I could interpret not bringing iMessage to Android as being decidely anti-monopolistic; they actively tried to avoid capturing the entire market. I’m sure that is not what this evidence is intended to show though.

cududa2• 5 years ago

What benefit would it give Apple to have all of Android users on iMessage? It’s not like they inject ads into your messaging streams/ they left money on the table to benefit another product?

To me, forcing them to make an Android version of iMessage would be pretty anti-American. Domestically they have 20-30% market share, and there’s 0 revenue to gain from an Android version except the tenuous concept that maybe they could use it to upsell someone to iOS? Idk, I agree with you here. Doesn’t seem clear to me why they should be obligated or compelled to ship iMessage for Android.

Sure, Apple Music, because there’s a fee attached to it, but do you think Android people would pay a few bucks a month for Android? Could they upsell it to another product like cloud storage? Would they a) want the scrutiny that comes with and iCloud upsell b) security risk from enabling iCloud on an unmanaged platform

AgentOrange1234• 5 years ago

Even without direct monetization, there could be advantages for Apple?

- It’d be compelling for a lot of Android users and would probably be widely installed. This would give Apple a strong foothold onto Android devices. They could perhaps build on that for their services.

- For iOS users, this might make features like Apple Pay and sending songs more universal/reliable, which might provide more of a moat against Venmo, Android Pay, Spotify, etc. It’d also give a better privacy/security story if your messages aren’t converted to SMS.

- If it was sufficiently popular, it could provide Apple with a credible retaliatory move in case Google yanked something important from iOS.

- It would weaken the value proposition for important competitors like Facebook. Why let scary FB messenger on your phone if you can talk to everyone over iMessage?

I know nothing and this is just spitballing. Maybe nothing here outweighs keeping it exclusive to iOS, but Apple getting some of their software used far and wide seems like it could have real upside.

Geee• 5 years ago

I think they could differentiate with privacy. Privacy is the ultimate silver bullet that could kill Android, because the Google's business model is built around lack of privacy. If iMessage could elevate privacy awareness and expectations, then it's possible that people would want to switch to iPhone.

Eddy Cue wanted to bring iMessage to Android in 2013

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