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Yep. It's interesting how uniform the US messaging mesh is (practically everyone on iMessage). An average American's chance of having Whatsapp installed on thei
by puttycat 4y ago
Yep. It's interesting how uniform the US messaging mesh is (practically everyone on iMessage). An average American's chance of having Whatsapp installed on their phone is a function of how likely they are to have contacts from abroad.
- glandium 4y agoIf they have contacts in East Asia, they won't have Whatsapp either.
- rootsudo 4y agoChina, no. Wechat. Japan, no. Line. S. Korea, no - Kakaotalk. South East Asia: Whatsapp, yes. It is interesting.
- gcanyon 4y agoThailand: Line.
- tuankiet65 4y agoSEA is a bit more diverse than just Whatsapp. Vietnam: Facebook Messenger, Zalo (home grown IM), Viber.
- alephnerd 4y agoVietnam: Zalo or FB Messenger, not WhatsApp
- spacehunt 4y agoExcept for Hong Kong, where most people have Whatsapp + at least one of Telegram, Signal, Line, Wechat.
- pjmlp 4y agoAnd on the Balkans region most likely will be Viber.
- int_19h 4y agoThe actual market share for Apple in US mobile market is around 50%, so even if every single one of those use iMessage exclusively, there are still plenty of people locked out of it. If you don't have any in your social circles, that's probably due to the nature of those circles.
- dagmx 4y ago~50% overall but something like 87% for teens. That discrepancy in numbers is really going to be interesting within a generation or two.
- kweingar 4y ago> within a generation or two Not sure I agree. A generation or two is eons in tech. In that timeframe there will likely be another massive paradigm shift that totally washes away today’s thinking about phones, communication, etc.
- dagmx 4y agoThat’s assuming however that the paradigm shifts are sudden or that Apple can’t adapt. Their existing market dominance among teens positions them very strongly to keep brand loyalty into whatever paradigms come next.
- Spivak 4y agoEveryone makes this mistake. Something being popular with young people is no guarantee it will remain popular as they grow up. The social pressures that lead teens to want iPhones drop off over time.
- dagmx 4y agoNobody said there was a guarantee it would stick to the same percentages as they grow, but brand loyalty is definitely a thing for people that develops in their formative years. It’s also not just “social pressures to use iPhones” but the fact that parents can: * give them hand me downs due to longer device lifespans * the ability to get them more easily serviced when their kid breaks something by going to the Apple Store * the ability to more easily buy a decent midrange device on a student discount * the ability to communicate more easily themselves using iMessage * appealing to privacy and safety in Apple marketing People over index on social pressure from other teens. There’s lots of reasons teens get devices and many come from parental choices. Maybe the percentages will vary as they grow but any company worth their salt is paying attention to the possibly high rate of market drop off that they’ll experience
- Telemakhos 4y agoBoth are American companies. Whatsapp is Meta (Facebook), and iMessage (actually now Messages) is Apple. If you care about security, the question is which is more likely to comply with the US government's requests for information: Meta or Apple. If you don't, the question is price point, ignoring the question of which is more likely to make your data marketable. That is likely Meta, so we could rephrase this as, "Do you care to pay more for Apple's privacy, or is it okay for Meta to sell your messages to anyone willing to pay?"
- sfifs 4y agoThere's Line, Kakao Talk, Viber, WeChat, SnapChat... all very popular in different countries & with different demographics. WeChat is of course the most sophisticated in terms of ecosystem beyond just messaging. None of these may have arisen or become so popular if Apple & Android had created interop.
- nine_k 4y agoI wonder how Telegram was not mentioned in the thread so far.
- batiudrami 4y agoTelegram is orders of magnitude smaller than any of the those listed above, except maybe a Viber (I’m not sure; it seems to have some use in SEA countries).
- fomine3 4y agoIs Snapchat used like them among every generation?
- Un1corn 4y agoAs always, it's important to remember that people choice of messaging depends on network effect more than anything else. But even without it, they are both E2E encrypted. Of course you could ship new code that send the messages unencrypted but it would be extremely risky for Meta and the government, depending on the target