Was Apple's decision to 'do not provide iMessage for Android' a mistake?



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iMessage ', a messaging app developed and provided by Apple, has not been provided to Android, which divides the mobile market from iOS at the time of article creation, and is the messaging standard ' rich communication service ( RCS) ” is also not supported. However, from Apple's internal email published in 2021, it is clear that as of 2013, there was a discussion that 'iMessage should be provided for Android.'



On November 7, 2022, Internal Tech Emails, a web service that publishes internal emails in the technology industry, posted an email exchanged in 2013 by senior Apple executives on Twitter. The series of emails were published in connection with the 2021 Apple v. Epic Games lawsuit.



Eddie Cue , Apple's senior vice president of services, said in an internal email on August 7, 2013, 'We need to bring iMessage to Android. Several people have already investigated the matter. But we should go full speed ahead and make this an official project.' This is in response to an article that was reported at the time that 'Google may buy WhatsApp'. As a result, although it was Facebook (now Meta) that acquired WhatsApp, it can be seen that there was a sense of crisis about other companies acquiring the messaging network.



In response to Mr. Cue's email,

Philip Schiller , who was Apple's senior vice president of marketing, said, ``iMessage is not profitable.''



Mr. Cue pointed out that 'iMessage is not profitable', Google is growing rapidly in many fields such as search, mail, free video, browser, etc., and the danger of being deprived of important messaging applications in the mobile environment is suing.



On the other hand,

Craig Federighi , senior vice president of software, argued that although iMessage is certainly a good app, Android users who have few iOS users' friends will not switch messaging apps. He expressed concern that if iMessage was also offered on Android, it would be easier for customers who know many iOS users to choose Android, resulting in a decrease in the share of iOS.



Responding to Federighi's concerns, Cue said Android's huge market share should continue and it would be best to make iMessage a better app to attract Android users. I argued.



Mr. Schiller returned a negative comment, saying, 'This is similar to the strategy that tried to offer Safari on Windows.



Mr. Cue still argues that continuous improvements in iMessage can win users.



However, Mr. Schiller said, 'iMessage was born as an iOS feature that brings value to our iPhone users.' 'There is no revenue, it is covered by our product margin.' It argued that it was nonsense to enter the messaging app business to compete with Google and WhatsApp.



As a result, Apple has not provided iMessage to Android, so even at the time of writing the article, functions such as read confirmation and file transfer are limited in messaging with Android devices. In September 2022, a reporter asked Tim Cook, ``If you try to send a video to your mother who uses Android, it will be compressed and blurred. Please buy an iPhone for me.'

Tim Cook, who was accused of not being able to properly send a message to his mother with an Android smartphone, jokes, ``Buy your mother an iPhone.''-GIGAZINE



According to social news site Hacker News, ``Apple's strategy of prioritizing and enclosing the experience that iOS users can get may be effective in the short term, but in the long term, it will lose market dominance. It leads to loss.”

Apple Execs on iMessage for Android (2013) | Hacker News
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33500579

In addition, Mr. Federigi mentioned this in a question-and-answer manner at a live event hosted by the economic paper Wall Street Journal in 2022.

Apple on iPhones, Chips, Privacy, Working From Home and More | WSJ Tech Live 2022-YouTube


Mr. Federighi argued that the focus of his exchange with Mr. Cue in 2013 was that ``if you want to enter the mobile messaging market, you must enter in a way that creates a difference from existing products.'' This was costly, and Mr. Federighi and others gave up offering iMessage for Android because they were not in a position to realize it. Federighi pointed out that if iMessage was shipped halfway for Android, it would be a hindrance to future service improvements, ``We wanted to choose a place where we can contribute. You choose where to invest and where to make a difference.'

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in Mobile,   Software, Posted by log1h_ik