Apple says iMessage on Android ‘will hurt us more than help us’ | Hacker News Reader

Apple says iMessage on Android ‘will hurt us more than help us’

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33 pointspseudolus21 comments

Blackberry thought the same with BBM, and it is somewhat true – until it isn't. Ultimately what keeps users locked in is how much they like the phone, not the messaging app they are forced to use. I doubt there are many iPhone users who don't also have one of WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Signal etc. installed.

You can count me as one person.

I choose an iPhone because some people in my circle only use iMessage. I also don't have anyone in my circle who uses Signal, except for other people with iPhones. And they prefer iMessage if available. As for Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp, I don't run Facebook code on my devices.

That said, even if iMessage went cross-platform, I'm pretty sure I'll stick in the iDevice family.

So if they're discussing it in this fashion, the inability to backup or export your iMessages is carefully considered.

I know many people who have lost their messages from deceased loved ones. Now I'm figuring out it's because apple mindfully doesn't allow it.

You can download Messages backups from iCloud.

You can also copy and paste the messages, or screenshot them. Nobody is arguing it’s impossible to extract your iMessages, just that it’s more restrictive and complicated than it needs to be for technical or resource constraint reasons.

If you own a Mac, you can find the SQLite database of your messages at ~/Library/Messages/chat.db. Back it up regularly. If using a terminal, be sure to grant it Full Disk Access.

Most of the folks are ios-only.

...yes? That was always a large part of the Apple ecosystem, and it purposefully being Apple-only has been shown in advertisements ever since it was created.

Not everyone on HN seems to have gotten the memo, as evidenced by this exchange from a few days ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26715754

So what are their plans with RCS on 4g / 5g? (RCS is the upgrade to SMS / MMS that has nearly all the features of modern online messengers). With RCS, if you don't care about encryption, you don't have to care about messengers like iMessage anymore. With RCS we also don't have to care about Apple or Google datamining our personal messages as it doesn't go through their servers (though they still can access it through our devices).

What possible benefit could apple get from iMessage for Android? It wont help them sell more of their own products so why should they put in efforts on a Droid version.

Leverage over android users. If iMessage became dominant on Android, Apple can make the experience just a little bit better on iOS to encourage people to switch.

Seems like more work (having 2 code based for two different OSes) for little reward.

Apple can afford it and the reward is potentially huge! Consider it an advertising spend.

I honestly don’t see a reward for developing a non monetized application on another platform. Especially so if it’s going to just be a stripped version (no Apple Pay, no Find My integration) and they would lose users in doing so.

What would Apple benefit from in porting iMessage to Android?

Business plain and simple. iOS lives, and dies by its already low market share of ~15% in the USA.

Making iMessage accessible on all platforms is a win for the end user, but almost surely results in existing iPhone users moving to Android. Kiss your already tiny, non-USA market goodbye with a move like this.

iOS has a much higher market share in the USA (somewhere between 40-60%).

Their international marketshare is above 15%, your numbers are way off but even moreso their share of international smartphone profits (very high margins) is gigantic and far our of proportion to their market share. I don’t think there’s a smartphone maker getting more profit from a phone than Apple.

The only way the 15% number would make sense is if they consider the share of iOS among all OSs (phones, tablets, PCs, servers, mainframes, etc.)

iOS has ~40% of U.S. smartphone market, but has an even higher adoption among teenagers (something like 80-90%).

https://www.counterpointresearch.com/us-market-smartphone-sh...

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