This weekend, the search engine giant took to social media to complain about the influence of iMessage on today's kids. The company was responding to a Wall Street Journal report detailing the lock-in and social pressure Apple's walled garden is creating among US teens. According to the article, teens and college students dread the ostracism that comes with a green text. The social pressure is high, with some people being ostracized after they switched to another device. This is a problem for the search engine.
The official account of the Android phone system wrote that iMessage should not benefit from being bullied. Texting can bring us together. Let's make this one industry. "Apple's iMessage lock-in is a documented strategy," said Hiroshi Lockheimer, a senior vice president at Google. It is disingenuous for a company that has humanity and equity to use peer pressure and bully to sell products. Today's standards exist to fix this.
Rich Communication Services, or Rich Communication Services, a standard from 2008 that has slowly gained traction as an upgrade to SMS, is the "solution" that is being pushed by the internet giant. Improved image sharing and user presence are added to carrier messaging. It is a carrier standard that has been around for 14 years, so it doesn't have many things you would want from a modern messaging service. The result is a lot of clunky solutions which aren't as good as a modern messaging service.
The industry has been urged to make the upgrade since the introduction of RCS. The US carriers are all onboard, and there is some acceptance among the international carriers. Apple is the biggest holdout.
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Apple's green-versus-blue bubble explainer is on its website.
The company views iMessage lock-in as a valuable weapon and has never publicly shot down the idea of adding RCS to the service. Apple doesn't want to weaken its walled garden by bringing RCS to iMessage and making it easier to communicate with other people.
In the US, young adults are more interested in the Apple product. More than 70% of people aged 18 to 24 are using the iPhone. The success is attributed to Apple's lock-in with apps.
What do you sow?
The public-shaming campaign is being used by the company to get Apple to change its mind on RCS. It's laughable that other companies would want to get advice from a company that doesn't have much credibility when it comes to messaging services. If the company really wants to compete with iMessage, it should do so.
In a 25,000-word article, we detailed that the messaging history of the company is one of constant product startup and shutdowns. No division is really in charge of messaging because of a lack of product focus or a mandate from the CEO. Since the launch of iMessage, the company has released 13 halfhearted messaging products. Since it has sabotaged and abandoned its own plans to make an iMessage competitor, it should be blamed for the iMessage's dominance.
A dominant messaging app has real benefits for the community, even if it isn't directly monetizable. The rest of the industry was aware of it. The app took off after Facebook paid $22 billion to buy it. Facebook has two dominant messaging platforms. The Chinese messaging app, WeChat, has over one billion users, and has annual revenues of over $5 billion. Telegram is getting 40 billion valuations from investors, and is up to a $65 billion market cap. The market is very competitive, but it never makes an investment that is close to the competition.
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