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The usage of iMessage in Europe is vastly inferior to the usage of it in America. I think that was a reasonable argument from Apple and the European Commission

The usage of iMessage in Europe is vastly inferior to the usage of it in America. I think that was a reasonable argument from Apple and the European Commission agreed. But the thing is, apple obviously wants for people to use iPhones in Europe and to use their services just like in America. But they are now very much aware that this sort of market dominance won't come for free like it does in the USA.

marcellus23 3y ago
I'm curious, in what sense did it come "for free" in the USA?
- zamadatix 3y ago
  In that the EU does not sit idle once you become a significantly popular player in a given market, not in the sense that they were given free userbase. E.g. in this case if iPhones became more popular then they'd have to open up iMessage where as in the US having market dominance comes with significantly fewer strings attached.
- ghusto 3y ago
  In the U.S.A., people use iMessage by default, because they use text messaging. People don't use texts in Europe (we use WhatsApp and similar, but WhatsApp by a long margin). The reason people still use texts in the U.S.A. is up for debate, and it's something I've thought about for a long time.
  - hwbehrens 3y ago
    I think it's a historical artifact -- by the time that iMessage launched, the US was well into the phase of free, unlimited texting, so there was no barrier to "just texting". Since there was also no barrier (in terms of costs, subscriptions, or installation friction) to using iMessage, it was a drop-in upgrade of the user experience for SMS. In contrast, I still have to pay a fee to send SMS messages to my European relatives, so there's a financial incentive to overcome that initial friction to switch messaging provider.
    - eitally 3y ago
      Agreed, and additionally, at that time there were no significant SMS alternatives in the US, most people had dumb phones, and no messaging apps came with the sort of supplementary features we have grown accustomed to in the past ten years.
    - freedomben 3y ago
      > In contrast, I still have to pay a fee to send SMS messages to my European relatives Oh wow, yeah that's definitely a big reason people would use what's app instead. That's wild to think about and makes no sense. Any idea why that is? Is it regulatory reasons maybe?
      - lxgr 3y ago
        The reason is simply that phone calls across Europe were and are usually not free/included in flat rate plans. Telcos just never found a way to agree on something that makes sense: It's quite common to get unlimited domestic calls, but pay 10-30 cents per minute to a neighboring country. Nobody (other than businesses) actually pays that; people just ended up using WhatsApp for both calls and texts instead. So in a way it's the absence of regulation: Data roaming is free within the EU, thanks to a corresponding EU regulation; before that, it wasn't unusual to pay more than EUR 10 per Megabyte (yes, Megabyte, not Gigabyte).
        kj99 3y ago
        You’d think the EU might want to harmonize regulations around billing calls between countries!
        Denvercoder9 3y ago
        Regulation 2018/1971 limits the price for outgoing calls within the EEA to 0.19 ct/minute (excl. VAT). Interestingly enough, there doesn't seem to be a limit on incoming calls, though most providers don't charge for incoming calls.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    Aside from status-conscious teenagers (eww, green vs. blue) pretty much no one in the US cares whether you're on standard SMS vs. iMessage. But I pretty much only use WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger with friends overseas.
  - mrweasel 3y ago
    One really weird way that you can see that is looking at Denmark, which has historically been used as a test market for telcos. SMS was practically free when iMessage was announced, not entirely, but enough people had unlimited SMS plans at that time. Denmark was the testing ground for different phones and pricing plans, better to screw up in a market with 5 million people, compared to one with 80 million. I believe that the "free" SMSs at the time is a pretty big reason why iMessage is huge in Denmark, but not in the countries surrounding us. It's not the biggest messaging platform, that would be Facebook and Facebook messenger, not WhatsApp, Telegram or Signal. It seems like people want Europe to be all in on "alternative" platforms, but it's frequently all Facebook properties.
    - hpeter 3y ago
      IOS is the dominating mobile OS in Denmark, everyone I know uses iMessage. I wonder if the 0.5 cent fee on free installs will change anything, will the train ticketing app start charging a subscription fee on IOS now that they need to pay per install Apple?
      - danaris 3y ago
        That fee is only if the developer opts into the new terms. They are welcome to continue with the current App Store terms indefinitely and pay nothing per install.
  - hombre_fatal 3y ago
    US was a first-mover and had early telcom penetration, so SMS became culturally ubiquitous since it was the tech of the era. Late-movers could skip that and go straight to data-based telcoms and never had to deal with the critical culture mass of SMS while the US was stuck bolting on to and bridging SMS. It's like being able to skip over copper and go straight to fiber optics.
    - inkyoto 3y ago
      > US was a first-mover and had early telcom penetration, so SMS became culturally ubiquitous since it was the tech of the era. Telco penetration – yes, the US had a upper hand. SMS (and messaging) – no, the US lagged behind for many years. DAMPS (the 2nd generation mobile standard in the US) and early CDMA US networks did not support SMS/text messaging at all whereas European telco users had already been happily texting each other since the introduction of GSM (2G, early 90s). Americans used the phone answering machines and the voicemail instead, which has been widely depicted in Hollywood movies and was a source of amusement for non-US watchers. GSM was later introduced in the US with very limited coverage on east and west coasts to support roaming for European users (roaming was non-existand in DAMPS and in CDMA networks, either) and operated on a frequency band (1900 MHz) that was incompatible with GSM 2G 900/1800 MHz bands and required a tri-band handset but it introduced SMS to the US mobile networks users for the first time. There was also a pricing barrier that hampered adoption of SMS in the US – European and Asian users had to pay for SMS's they have sent, but not receive one (the cost was zero), whereas the US users had to pay to send AND to receive text messages. Gradually, 3G came to the US, brought SMS out of the box, gradually replaced DAMPS and CDMA networks in the US and the US users got SMS out of the box. The US did not lead the cultural revolution that SMS had brought about in Europe/Asia.
    - ghusto 3y ago
      I don't know about that. I remember back in the nineties we were all using SMS in England. Pretty much all my friends had a mobile, and we treated SMS like social media DMs.
  - Kipters 3y ago
    In Italy, in 2005-2007 text messages were WIDELY used by teenagers in (like me at the time) too - they weren't free but really cheap (4000 for 2€/month) so pretty much everyone used them. Then a couple years later... gone, replaced by WhatsApp.
    - pmontra 3y ago
      I remember that. Zero Euro is much better than two Euro so SMSes where dropped. We were paying for data anyway.
  - mixmastamyk 3y ago
    What is the functional difference between imessage and whatsapp? I only see a different provider.
    - alberto180 3y ago
      It's available on many platforms. Otherwise no one would use it, since iPhones are quite the minority in Europe
- jerojero 3y ago
  In certain demographics in the USA (teenagers, young adults) the usage of iMessage is around 90%. It's a defacto monopoly but nothing is done about it from an anti-monopoly perspective. Such as forcing Apple to adopt open standards and interoperability. This market dominance does have a very real impact in which products people will and can realistically consume. I think maybe coming from a geeky background we might be quick to think such things are irrelevant but I don't think they are.
artimaeis 3y ago
Even in the US it's very rarely used by business, which is what the article cited as the main reason. > the EU probe found that iMessage falls outside the legislation because it is not widely used by businesses Apple does offer a specific service for businesses, Apple Messages for Business, but their documentation claims it's actually different from iMessage: https://register.apple.com/resources/messages/messaging-documentation/faq#general https://register.apple.com/resources/messages/messaging-docu... > Apple Messages for Business differs from the widely known iMessage by being a business to end-user service. Additionally, the encryption mechanism slightly differs from a traditional iMessage. Given that businesses can interface with AMfB using APIs rather than the Messages app on an Apple device, it seems that would fall pretty far outside the iMessage gatekeeping definition.
currymj 3y ago
it's too bad, i was hoping the USA could free ride off European regulation. i would like to see an iMessage app for Android. for me, it's the opposite of the teenager status issues. rather, a lot of older people seem not capable of understanding the difference between iMessage amd SMS - not colorblind, but they seem to not perceive green vs blue bubbles even after it is pointed out. and this has caused me big practical problems communicating with family due to failed message delivery (both SMS and iMessage).
- zer0zzz 3y ago
  Even with eu regulations I can’t see a path to iMessage for android.
- jerojero 3y ago
  Pretty sure Apple is not bringing side loading for apps in America, so I guess these changes won't necessarily trickle down. I think the USB C change was done world wide simply because it's much more difficult to restrict hardware than software. A lot of software is geo locked.

marcellus23 3y ago

I'm curious, in what sense did it come "for free" in the USA?

zamadatix 3y ago
In that the EU does not sit idle once you become a significantly popular player in a given market, not in the sense that they were given free userbase. E.g. in this case if iPhones became more popular then they'd have to open up iMessage where as in the US having market dominance comes with significantly fewer strings attached.
ghusto 3y ago
In the U.S.A., people use iMessage by default, because they use text messaging. People don't use texts in Europe (we use WhatsApp and similar, but WhatsApp by a long margin). The reason people still use texts in the U.S.A. is up for debate, and it's something I've thought about for a long time.
- hwbehrens 3y ago
  I think it's a historical artifact -- by the time that iMessage launched, the US was well into the phase of free, unlimited texting, so there was no barrier to "just texting". Since there was also no barrier (in terms of costs, subscriptions, or installation friction) to using iMessage, it was a drop-in upgrade of the user experience for SMS. In contrast, I still have to pay a fee to send SMS messages to my European relatives, so there's a financial incentive to overcome that initial friction to switch messaging provider.
  - eitally 3y ago
    Agreed, and additionally, at that time there were no significant SMS alternatives in the US, most people had dumb phones, and no messaging apps came with the sort of supplementary features we have grown accustomed to in the past ten years.
  - freedomben 3y ago
    > In contrast, I still have to pay a fee to send SMS messages to my European relatives Oh wow, yeah that's definitely a big reason people would use what's app instead. That's wild to think about and makes no sense. Any idea why that is? Is it regulatory reasons maybe?
    - lxgr 3y ago
      The reason is simply that phone calls across Europe were and are usually not free/included in flat rate plans. Telcos just never found a way to agree on something that makes sense: It's quite common to get unlimited domestic calls, but pay 10-30 cents per minute to a neighboring country. Nobody (other than businesses) actually pays that; people just ended up using WhatsApp for both calls and texts instead. So in a way it's the absence of regulation: Data roaming is free within the EU, thanks to a corresponding EU regulation; before that, it wasn't unusual to pay more than EUR 10 per Megabyte (yes, Megabyte, not Gigabyte).
      - kj99 3y ago
        You’d think the EU might want to harmonize regulations around billing calls between countries!
        Denvercoder9 3y ago
        Regulation 2018/1971 limits the price for outgoing calls within the EEA to 0.19 ct/minute (excl. VAT). Interestingly enough, there doesn't seem to be a limit on incoming calls, though most providers don't charge for incoming calls.
- ghaff 3y ago
  Aside from status-conscious teenagers (eww, green vs. blue) pretty much no one in the US cares whether you're on standard SMS vs. iMessage. But I pretty much only use WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger with friends overseas.
- mrweasel 3y ago
  One really weird way that you can see that is looking at Denmark, which has historically been used as a test market for telcos. SMS was practically free when iMessage was announced, not entirely, but enough people had unlimited SMS plans at that time. Denmark was the testing ground for different phones and pricing plans, better to screw up in a market with 5 million people, compared to one with 80 million. I believe that the "free" SMSs at the time is a pretty big reason why iMessage is huge in Denmark, but not in the countries surrounding us. It's not the biggest messaging platform, that would be Facebook and Facebook messenger, not WhatsApp, Telegram or Signal. It seems like people want Europe to be all in on "alternative" platforms, but it's frequently all Facebook properties.
  - hpeter 3y ago
    IOS is the dominating mobile OS in Denmark, everyone I know uses iMessage. I wonder if the 0.5 cent fee on free installs will change anything, will the train ticketing app start charging a subscription fee on IOS now that they need to pay per install Apple?
    - danaris 3y ago
      That fee is only if the developer opts into the new terms. They are welcome to continue with the current App Store terms indefinitely and pay nothing per install.
- hombre_fatal 3y ago
  US was a first-mover and had early telcom penetration, so SMS became culturally ubiquitous since it was the tech of the era. Late-movers could skip that and go straight to data-based telcoms and never had to deal with the critical culture mass of SMS while the US was stuck bolting on to and bridging SMS. It's like being able to skip over copper and go straight to fiber optics.
  - inkyoto 3y ago
    > US was a first-mover and had early telcom penetration, so SMS became culturally ubiquitous since it was the tech of the era. Telco penetration – yes, the US had a upper hand. SMS (and messaging) – no, the US lagged behind for many years. DAMPS (the 2nd generation mobile standard in the US) and early CDMA US networks did not support SMS/text messaging at all whereas European telco users had already been happily texting each other since the introduction of GSM (2G, early 90s). Americans used the phone answering machines and the voicemail instead, which has been widely depicted in Hollywood movies and was a source of amusement for non-US watchers. GSM was later introduced in the US with very limited coverage on east and west coasts to support roaming for European users (roaming was non-existand in DAMPS and in CDMA networks, either) and operated on a frequency band (1900 MHz) that was incompatible with GSM 2G 900/1800 MHz bands and required a tri-band handset but it introduced SMS to the US mobile networks users for the first time. There was also a pricing barrier that hampered adoption of SMS in the US – European and Asian users had to pay for SMS's they have sent, but not receive one (the cost was zero), whereas the US users had to pay to send AND to receive text messages. Gradually, 3G came to the US, brought SMS out of the box, gradually replaced DAMPS and CDMA networks in the US and the US users got SMS out of the box. The US did not lead the cultural revolution that SMS had brought about in Europe/Asia.
  - ghusto 3y ago
    I don't know about that. I remember back in the nineties we were all using SMS in England. Pretty much all my friends had a mobile, and we treated SMS like social media DMs.
- Kipters 3y ago
  In Italy, in 2005-2007 text messages were WIDELY used by teenagers in (like me at the time) too - they weren't free but really cheap (4000 for 2€/month) so pretty much everyone used them. Then a couple years later... gone, replaced by WhatsApp.
  - pmontra 3y ago
    I remember that. Zero Euro is much better than two Euro so SMSes where dropped. We were paying for data anyway.
- mixmastamyk 3y ago
  What is the functional difference between imessage and whatsapp? I only see a different provider.
  - alberto180 3y ago
    It's available on many platforms. Otherwise no one would use it, since iPhones are quite the minority in Europe
jerojero 3y ago
In certain demographics in the USA (teenagers, young adults) the usage of iMessage is around 90%. It's a defacto monopoly but nothing is done about it from an anti-monopoly perspective. Such as forcing Apple to adopt open standards and interoperability. This market dominance does have a very real impact in which products people will and can realistically consume. I think maybe coming from a geeky background we might be quick to think such things are irrelevant but I don't think they are.

artimaeis 3y ago

Even in the US it's very rarely used by business, which is what the article cited as the main reason. > the EU probe found that iMessage falls outside the legislation because it is not widely used by businesses Apple does offer a specific service for businesses, Apple Messages for Business, but their documentation claims it's actually different from iMessage: https://register.apple.com/resources/messages/messaging-documentation/faq#general https://register.apple.com/resources/messages/messaging-docu... > Apple Messages for Business differs from the widely known iMessage by being a business to end-user service. Additionally, the encryption mechanism slightly differs from a traditional iMessage. Given that businesses can interface with AMfB using APIs rather than the Messages app on an Apple device, it seems that would fall pretty far outside the iMessage gatekeeping definition.

currymj 3y ago

it's too bad, i was hoping the USA could free ride off European regulation. i would like to see an iMessage app for Android. for me, it's the opposite of the teenager status issues. rather, a lot of older people seem not capable of understanding the difference between iMessage amd SMS - not colorblind, but they seem to not perceive green vs blue bubbles even after it is pointed out. and this has caused me big practical problems communicating with family due to failed message delivery (both SMS and iMessage).

zer0zzz 3y ago
Even with eu regulations I can’t see a path to iMessage for android.
jerojero 3y ago
Pretty sure Apple is not bringing side loading for apps in America, so I guess these changes won't necessarily trickle down. I think the USB C change was done world wide simply because it's much more difficult to restrict hardware than software. A lot of software is geo locked.