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Comment by noirscape | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, iMessage just... didn't really take off here. In Europe, WhatsApp holds a much greater market share in the West, while the further east you go, Telegram becomes the more dominant means of communication.

It's probably in part because of the fact that iOS isn't as big in Europe; outside of the Netherlands (where iOS controls about 70% of the smartphone market) it tends to be pretty equal in market share with Android and there's of course no iMessage on Android. People want to talk to each other, share photos and WhatsApp was cross-platform with Android basically from the start.

Telegram is a bit of a late arrival comparatively, and I couldn't tell you why it's big in East Europe, it just... is. Probably something to do with the remaining Russian influence in those countries?

It makes total sense why WhatsApp is designated a gatekeeper but iMessage isn't.

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Honestly, I have experience with both and Telegram is far superior. Yes, it was created by "Russian Zuck", and it was also blocked in Russia for a long time. It is argued, if FSB has keys to decrypt Telegram. I personally did not see evidence to that. Some of the options widely used in the EE: - by default chats are not e2e but there is a quite secret option. - built-in proxy support to add another encryption layer and avoid blockings. - there are news channels which is a very convenient way of getting and sharing content. Yes, WhatsApp is getting these now. There is a ton of other features which are only now coming to WhatsApp, which has e2e by default for every chat. On the other hand, lately, I feel that Telegram is going to also have-it-all which is annoying. Even stories now

Many of my friends in Germany have Telegram as well and I think that it’s mainly because it has by far the best multi device (esp. Desktop / Notebook) UX. Switching devices with Telegram and using it on several devices concurrently has always been super easy.

It’s because iMessage is Apple only. Europe is 90% Android while the US is 50/50.

It's still not clear why an app that can be used by at most 50% of people is dominant.

IANAL and this isn't an argument of whats legally a monopoly in the US, but I think "dominant" or "not dominant" across the entire population is an insufficient way to look at market power when network effects are involved. As an example, in the US its about 50/50 but Gen Z is 87/13 towards iPhone and there switching to Android presents a much much higher cost than a 50/50 or less scenario. Apple has considerable market power over a large slice of the population that network tightly together. You also see incidental enforcement of social stratification where wealthier users are more likely to use iPhone.

I think those are things that someone could be legitimately concerned about from a competition standpoint without considering iMessage to be dominant across the entire market.

I just pretend that rather than Tim Cook's face telling us that if we want to communicate with grandma we need to buy her an iphone, it's AT&T / Ma Bell telling us that.

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