4 ms·

It is a little odd that the US is so iMessage-heavy when the rest of the world isn't It's not odd at all. Lots of iPhones in the US because of high incomes, a

It is a little odd that the US is so iMessage-heavy when the rest of the world isn't It's not odd at all. Lots of iPhones in the US because of high incomes, and high iPhone availability. Lots of non-iPhones in the rest of the world because of comparatively low incomes, and significantly less iPhone availability. I see no mystery.

delta_p_delta_x 4y ago
> Lots of iPhones in the US because of high incomes, and high iPhone availability The US is not the only country with a wealthy populace which tends to use mostly iPhones. The UK, Germany, Switzerland, the Baltics, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan are all roughly equally as wealthy (if not more so) per capita. However, in literally everywhere else but the US, people almost exclusively use third-party apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, WeChat, etc. iMessage is completely ignored, and the Messages app on iPhones is used solely for SMSes from carriers, 2FA OTPs, and random spam that is ignored. Furthermore, several flagship Android phones rival iPhones in cost now.
- dixie_land 4y ago
  One of reasons WeChat and WhatsApp became popular in low income countries first, was that in those countries SMS were/are charged PER MESSAGE
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    This was the case in the US as well until the early 2000s. Texting before then could be as much as a quarter per 160 characters!
  - tomatocracy 4y ago
    International SMS charges and ability to send photos without very high MMS charges were also a big driver of WhatsApp uptake - in the UK individual SMS charges had basically gone before WhatsApp came along but those two reasons were why my friendship group moved to it.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  > equally as wealthy (if not more so) per capita Are you thinking of GDP, perhaps? I think that household income (and individual) is highest in the US (adjusted for PPP). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_capita_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c...
afavour 4y ago
iPhone still only has 55% of the market in the US. There are very, very many Android users out there.
- trelane 4y ago
  But Apple products are premium products, with status attached. As my kid will attest to, though not directly.
  - afavour 4y ago
    That’s not a US-specific phenomenon, though.
rhaway84773 4y ago
I think the real reason is that in the early 2000s, pre-iPhone, texting was ridiculously expensive in the US and much cheaper in the rest of the world. Also, Americans were using awful phones while the RoW was using much better phones like Nokias thst even in their non-communicator series made texting far easier thanks to stuff like T9. So the rest of the world used SMS and texting far more than Americans Pre-smartphone. When smartphones came out and WhatsApp was released, the RoW was far more willing to pay the dollars needed to buy WhatsApp (it wasn’t free before FB bought it) because they would easily save on their low but still not free SMS charges. Whereas Americans were not as willing to pay for an app to do something they didn’t do anyways, and anyways by this time phone carriers in the US made SMS free for the most part. As a result WhatsApp became entrenched in the RoW well before iMessage was released (2011), so non Americans continued using WhatsApp, even as Americans started using the free available iMessage instead.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  > Also, Americans were using awful phones while the RoW was using much better phones like Nokias thst even in their non-communicator series made texting far easier thanks to stuff like T9. Worth mentioning the unique phones sold in the Japanese market by domestic manufacturers prior to smartphones, which were some of the most advanced in existence at that point and had been for many years. People in Japan were doing things on their phones in the late 90s and early 00s that most of the rest of the world wouldn’t for another 10-15 years.
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    Eh, my mid 2000s cell phone was pretty cheap and could do live streaming video, internet, email, "apps" including facebook etc, it's just that nobody used any of these features in the US because it was at least 100$ a month to do ANYTHING that used the internet.
- CadmiumYellow 4y ago
  It's kind of the opposite of this, actually. Unlimited texting plans became widespread in the US in the 2000s because texting was incredibly popular. When I was a young teenager it was common for kids to get in trouble for racking up hundreds of dollars worth of texts each month so when carriers started offering affordable unlimited texting plans families switched to them en masse. By the time I went to college unlimited texting was a ubiquitous feature of American family phone plans. Mobile data remained extremely expensive, however, and free public wifi was pretty scarce in the US (and still is compared to Europe). At the same time free public wifi was becoming widespread in the rest of the world while unlimited texting plans remained expensive, so non-Americans started using internet-based messaging apps while Americans continued using SMS until Apple started mixing the two automatically via iMessage. Americans definitely used Nokia phones in the 2000s btw, not to mention Asian ones like LG, Sony, etc. I never saw a cell phone in the US that didn't come with T9 word and by ~2008 full QWERTY keyboard phones were extremely popular. Texting was very easy in America in the 2000s and we did a lot of it.

delta_p_delta_x 4y ago

> Lots of iPhones in the US because of high incomes, and high iPhone availability The US is not the only country with a wealthy populace which tends to use mostly iPhones. The UK, Germany, Switzerland, the Baltics, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan are all roughly equally as wealthy (if not more so) per capita. However, in literally everywhere else but the US, people almost exclusively use third-party apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, WeChat, etc. iMessage is completely ignored, and the Messages app on iPhones is used solely for SMSes from carriers, 2FA OTPs, and random spam that is ignored. Furthermore, several flagship Android phones rival iPhones in cost now.

dixie_land 4y ago
One of reasons WeChat and WhatsApp became popular in low income countries first, was that in those countries SMS were/are charged PER MESSAGE
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  This was the case in the US as well until the early 2000s. Texting before then could be as much as a quarter per 160 characters!
- tomatocracy 4y ago
  International SMS charges and ability to send photos without very high MMS charges were also a big driver of WhatsApp uptake - in the UK individual SMS charges had basically gone before WhatsApp came along but those two reasons were why my friendship group moved to it.
rootusrootus 4y ago
> equally as wealthy (if not more so) per capita Are you thinking of GDP, perhaps? I think that household income (and individual) is highest in the US (adjusted for PPP). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_capita_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c...

afavour 4y ago

iPhone still only has 55% of the market in the US. There are very, very many Android users out there.

trelane 4y ago
But Apple products are premium products, with status attached. As my kid will attest to, though not directly.
- afavour 4y ago
  That’s not a US-specific phenomenon, though.

rhaway84773 4y ago

I think the real reason is that in the early 2000s, pre-iPhone, texting was ridiculously expensive in the US and much cheaper in the rest of the world. Also, Americans were using awful phones while the RoW was using much better phones like Nokias thst even in their non-communicator series made texting far easier thanks to stuff like T9. So the rest of the world used SMS and texting far more than Americans Pre-smartphone. When smartphones came out and WhatsApp was released, the RoW was far more willing to pay the dollars needed to buy WhatsApp (it wasn’t free before FB bought it) because they would easily save on their low but still not free SMS charges. Whereas Americans were not as willing to pay for an app to do something they didn’t do anyways, and anyways by this time phone carriers in the US made SMS free for the most part. As a result WhatsApp became entrenched in the RoW well before iMessage was released (2011), so non Americans continued using WhatsApp, even as Americans started using the free available iMessage instead.

kitsunesoba 4y ago
> Also, Americans were using awful phones while the RoW was using much better phones like Nokias thst even in their non-communicator series made texting far easier thanks to stuff like T9. Worth mentioning the unique phones sold in the Japanese market by domestic manufacturers prior to smartphones, which were some of the most advanced in existence at that point and had been for many years. People in Japan were doing things on their phones in the late 90s and early 00s that most of the rest of the world wouldn’t for another 10-15 years.
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  Eh, my mid 2000s cell phone was pretty cheap and could do live streaming video, internet, email, "apps" including facebook etc, it's just that nobody used any of these features in the US because it was at least 100$ a month to do ANYTHING that used the internet.
CadmiumYellow 4y ago
It's kind of the opposite of this, actually. Unlimited texting plans became widespread in the US in the 2000s because texting was incredibly popular. When I was a young teenager it was common for kids to get in trouble for racking up hundreds of dollars worth of texts each month so when carriers started offering affordable unlimited texting plans families switched to them en masse. By the time I went to college unlimited texting was a ubiquitous feature of American family phone plans. Mobile data remained extremely expensive, however, and free public wifi was pretty scarce in the US (and still is compared to Europe). At the same time free public wifi was becoming widespread in the rest of the world while unlimited texting plans remained expensive, so non-Americans started using internet-based messaging apps while Americans continued using SMS until Apple started mixing the two automatically via iMessage. Americans definitely used Nokia phones in the 2000s btw, not to mention Asian ones like LG, Sony, etc. I never saw a cell phone in the US that didn't come with T9 word and by ~2008 full QWERTY keyboard phones were extremely popular. Texting was very easy in America in the 2000s and we did a lot of it.