The native Apple messaging program, iMessage, is not as popular in India as WhatsApp. However, it remains a popular method of communication in the United States, where iPhones dominate the phone market and are popular with young users. It is still not known when Apple will make iMessage available to Android users, despite offering FaceTime to Android customers during the COVID outbreak last year. Google’s Senior Vice President of Platforms and Ecosystems, Hiroshi Lockheimer, criticizes Apple for failing to use available technology to make iMessage available for everyone. In fact, he claims Apple even ‘uses peer pressure and bullying to promote things’.
In a Wall Street Journal column titled ‘Why Apple’s iMessage Is Winning: Teens Fear the Green Text Bubble,’ Lockheimer makes the same argument, arguing that Apple treats iMessages from Android phones differently. Peer pressure particularly affects teens. In the beginning, iMessage may accept messages from Android phones, but the messages will appear as texts with a green chat bubble. Likewise, Android users cannot send memojis to iMessage, which is only available to iPhone users. A blue chat bubble appears when two iPhone users are communicating via iMessage.
According to Wall Street Journal report, Lockheimer argues, ‘there are no real technical or product causes for this issue. The solutions are currently there, and we encourage Apple to join the rest of the mobile sector in putting them into action. We believe that individuals should be able to connect with one another without artificial barriers. It simply does not have to be this way’. Android’s official Twitter account also slammed Apple, saying, ‘iMessage should not gain from bullying. Texting should bring us together, and there is a solution. Let us work together to solve this as a single industry’.
In 2020, Google plans to roll out Rich Communication Service to Google Messages globally, as Lockheimer refers to it. ‘Group chats don’t need to break this way,’ Lockheimer argues in another tweet. There is a Very Simple Solution. In the RCS’s open invitation, RCS says, ‘We’re here to help those who can make this right’. RCS, in a nutshell, is a messaging standard that looks to improve on SMS technology. It basically converts the default messaging software into a WhatsApp-like service that uses Wi-Fi to transmit multi-media files, make group chats, and do other things. These benefits will be available to Android users if iMessage embraces RCS.
Apple claims that iOS and iPhones will become more vulnerable to hacking if IMessaging facility is available on other platforms. Analysts, however, contend that iPhone users around the globe already use other services, such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, meaning the argument is moot.
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