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I believe the assertion suggesting that iMessage plays a pivotal role in the success of the iPhone and contributes significantly to Apple's business is inaccura

I believe the assertion suggesting that iMessage plays a pivotal role in the success of the iPhone and contributes significantly to Apple's business is inaccurate. The iMessage platform, in itself, does not possess an inherent quality that renders the iPhone more appealing to consumers. On the contrary, it is the iPhone's inherent appeal that enhances the attractiveness of iMessage. The prestige of the iPhone imparts a certain allure to iMessage, establishing a relationship where the iPhone acts as the catalyst for iMessage's appeal, rather than the reverse. This is why the the iPhone is still a status symbol among the middle class and richest people in the EU, Asia and India - even though they couldn't care less about iMessage over there.

troupo 3y ago
> This is why the the iPhone is still a status symbol among the middle class and richest people in the EU wat? iPhone costs as much as an equivalent Android (and has for some time), and since you can get it with your phone subscription for a rather low monthly payment, it hasn't been a status symbol for a decade or more.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  >iPhone costs as much as an equivalent Android Only flagships, But decent Androids can be had for much less than an iPhone. Like the Samsung A54 for example. Apple doesn't have ~300 Euro phones with OLED screens in its offer.
  - troupo 3y ago
    Yes, but that doesn't make them "status phones for middle class people". The latest iPhone 15 can be had for 30 EUR/month even in Sweden (Sweden is very expensive) [1]. That's a single lunch for two. [1] https://www.tre.se/handla/mobiltelefoner/apple/iphone-15 https://www.tre.se/handla/mobiltelefoner/apple/iphone-15
    - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
      Sweden also has some of the highest salaries in Europe/the world, that's why they're not a status symbol, because even a pizza delivery boy can afford an iPhone 15 Pro Max. But they very much are a status symbol in less developed countries with lower wages: Eastern Europe, Latin America, etc. Lower and middle class people there will save for over a year just to get the latest iPhone, which is why there's a huge market there for clones.
      - troupo 3y ago
        The original claim was about "the EU" as a whole. Now it's "less developed countries with lowest wages". Even in Eastern Europe it's much less of a status symbol than let's say 10 years ago: installment plans are much more affordable to a larger part of the population. Source: am from Eastern Europe (though I live in Sweden now). > Lower and middle class people there will save for over a year just to get the latest iPhone Yup, because the poor unwashed masses don't have discounts, instalment plans or phones included with subscriptions. Oh wait, they do.
        FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        Affordable doesn't mean financially sound. Going in debt to buy a phone you can't afford outright in cash, means you're too poor to afford it, that's why is a status symbol.
        troupo 3y ago
        > Affordable doesn't mean financially sound. I can't keep up with goalposts moving speed in this conversation
  - acdha 3y ago
    > Apple doesn't have ~300 Euro phones with OLED screens in its offer. Sure they do, the iPhone 12 is still widely available and it’s at least twice as fast as an A54. The prestige argument just hold up when you look at the data unless you scope it to say flagships. Google and Samsung charge just as much, and they have the same decreasingly small prestige that conveys. We’re 15 years into the touchscreen era so you’re just not impressing anyone.
    - dns_snek 3y ago
      iPhone 12 costs almost twice as much as Samsung A54.
      - threeseed 3y ago
        At least here in Australia for RRP, iPhone 12 is 20% more expensive.
    - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
      >Sure they do, the iPhone 12 is still widely available and it’s at least twice as fast as an A54. The iPhone 12 doesn't cost 300 Euros, it's 500 Euros and only comes with a dinky 64GB RAM base vs 128GB on the cheaper Samsung.
      - acdha 3y ago
        Okay, let’s assume the prices I got on Amazon were scammers. Here’s your “€300” A54 at €430: https://www.worten.pt/produtos/smartphone-samsung-galaxy-a54-5g-6-4-8-gb-128-gb-graphite-7731151 https://www.worten.pt/produtos/smartphone-samsung-galaxy-a54... Here’s the iPhone 12 at €550: https://www.worten.pt/produtos/iphone-12-apple-6-1-64-gb-preto-7256276 https://www.worten.pt/produtos/iphone-12-apple-6-1-64-gb-pre... Now, maybe that extra hundred euros is really critical to you but on the other hand the iPhone will have a service life years longer (it’s over twice as fast), but also neither of these is in a price range where you’re moving into prestige territory. This is like arguing Toyota vs. VW in an alternate universe where Mercedes and Bentley don’t exist. Phones are an impressively flat market in that regard: Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai have the same phones as millions of people who earn many orders of magnitude less than either of them.
  - GeekyBear 3y ago
    > decent Androids can be had for much less than an iPhone The Android ecosystem didn't have a $399 Android device in 2016 that is still getting first party security updates today. The 2016 iPhone SE has worked out to ~$50 per supported year.
    - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
      Non techie people who buy phones in the real world don't care about stuf they can't see or feel or don't understand, like long SW updates, since it's not like Androids stop working once you stop getting updates. They do care about stuff the can actually see, like having big bright high resolution OLLED display, not that dim low-res display on the SE pulled straight out of a 2008 parts bin. Especially that phones are now the main computing and content consumption platforms for most people. and if you put a 6.2 inch 1000 nits 1080p OLED vs 4.7 inch 720p 400 nits IPS, the difference will be as big as the grand canion and sway purchasing decisions way more than years of SW updates.
      - GeekyBear 3y ago
        > Non techie people who buy phones in the real world don't care about stuf they can't see or feel or don't understand Non techie folks care when their insecure phone allows something as important as their bank account to be hacked. The original Google Pixel also came out in 2016, and was completely dropped from support at the end of 2019.
        FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        >Non techie folks care when their insecure phone allows something as important as their bank account to be hacked. How many times are we gonna play this boogieman card? As if everyone gets their bank account instantly emptied by hackers the moment their Android is a day out of it's support window. How many times has that actually happened to users of older un-updated Androids in the real world, documented? I know about over half a dozen people with out of date Androids and they seem to still be solvent with their banks accounts intact. One of them is me. Hackers in the real world wanting to steal your savings are more likely to use phishing to get you to hand over your banking credentials voluntarily, rather than to build some elaborate malware targeting some unpatched flaw in your phone's OS to steal your banking credentials. Not that the latter isn't a risk, but it's being blown way out of proportion. >The original Google Pixel also came out in 2016, and was completely dropped from support at the end of 2019. We're talking here about buying modern phones today, not buying phones from the past. Google and Samsung did a 180 recently where they promise 7 years of updates to their lates phones. What argument are you gonna use 6 years from when those phones will still get updates?
- lxgr 3y ago
  > since you can get it with your phone subscription for a rather low monthly payment This is not (anymore) how people buy their phones in many countries. Even on relatively expensive post-paid plans in some European countries, you don't get a discounted phone anymore: All they offer is an interest-free installment plan. > iPhone costs as much as an equivalent Android What's an equivalent iPhone to e.g. a Galaxy A54 (~1 year old, EUR ~300-350)? The iPhone SE (2022) is twice as old and starts at EUR 500.
  - danaris 3y ago
    I think you may have misunderstood the GP. Apple offers the ability to buy the iPhone with $0 down over (IIRC) 24 months—making that iPhone SE cost ~$21/month. It has nothing to do with the contract discounts that phone providers used to offer.
    - lxgr 3y ago
      > It has nothing to do with the contract discounts that phone providers used to offer. It has a lot to do with that. Many US providers offer significant discounts on iPhones when buying them on a (new or renewed) contract. This was a very commonplace thing in Europe as well, but I believe it's become less common. Installment payments change nothing about the base price.
      - danaris 3y ago
        No, that's true; they don't. But they still make it much more accessible to buy an iPhone for someone who doesn't have €500 or $1000 or whatever at one time to comfortably spend on one. The idea that iPhones could be a meaningful "status symbol" by this point in their lifetime, given all the ways one can obtain one cheaply if that is what one wants, and the percentage of people who own them, just doesn't hold up under scrutiny. It's a meme repeated by people who need some reason to believe that people don't buy Apple's products on their own merits—much like the idea that it's a "cult".
        lxgr 3y ago
tremarley 3y ago
‘iMessage plays a pivotal role in the success of the iPhone and contributes significantly to Apple's business is inaccurate.’ If you ask many iPhone users why they use an iPhone rather than an Android. They would tell you iMessage first. Many iPhone users won’t even consider an Android, only because of iMessage and no other reason.
- SSLy 3y ago
  Re-read parent's last sentence.
  - makeitdouble 3y ago
    Parent's arguing that a minority of users have different motives and view it as a Veblen good. Might be true, but what about the rest of the iPhone users ?
- wkat4242 3y ago
  Not in Europe. Almost nobody uses iMessage here. It's because the marketshare of Apple is much lower in most EU countries. I'm glad because I use android also.
- threeseed 3y ago
  > If you ask many iPhone users why they use an iPhone rather than an Android. They would tell you iMessage first. Likewise if you ask many iPhone users they won't tell you iMessage first. That's the magic and wonder of meaningless anecdotes.
HDThoreaun 3y ago
iMessage popularity has little to do with status and everything to do with iPhone users refusing to use other messaging apps. If you want to text an iPhone and you don’t have iMessage chances are you will be forced to use sms which is utterly trash. I’ve been unable to convince my friends to use a messaging app so if I want to text them I pretty much need an iPhone.
- troupo 3y ago
  Strange then that iMessage didn't even qualify for DMA in EU by the number of users? ;)
- lxgr 3y ago
  The fact that it's impossible to convince any of your friends to use something that works with all phones and not just iPhones arguably does have something to do with status. In Europe, where less than half of all people (across social strata) use iPhones/iOS, this simply doesn't fly, so there is no "green bubble problem".
  - HDThoreaun 3y ago
    I think its more about the cultural critical mass than status. Most people already feel they have too many apps cluttering their screen, and at least in the US they have friends who only use iMessage, so they need iMessage. Once youve decided you need iMessage pretty easy to also decide not to bother with other messaging apps. The network effect is a huge problem for getting people to switch.
breather 3y ago
I'd say imessage (and facetime) is about half of why I use an iphone in the end. It's just very good at communicating with my social network, which predominately uses iphones.
- ghaff 3y ago
  As someone in the US, it's totally irrelevant. I never use Facetime and Imessage vs. SMS is a just don't care. If I occasionally communicate internationally, it's via Whatsapp or Facebook Messenger.
  - breather 3y ago
    > I never use Facetime Do you ever video chat with friends or family? In my experience this is almost entirely over FaceTime, though zoom had its moment there during the lockdown.
    - cozzyd 3y ago
      I use a combination of Google Meet and Whatsapp for video calls...
    - ghaff 3y ago
      No. My friends groups will setup free Zoom calls now and then.
  - eeghyrdcg 3y ago
    It kind of sounds like you’re saying “as a representative sample of people in the US”. If this is the case you are wrong — plenty of people use these services. If you’re just saying “you” then sure whatever, I put salsa on my toast.
jandrewrogers 3y ago
I also use WhatsApp and Signal as a daily driver. iMessage is legitimately superior to all other messaging platforms I've used, and it isn't close. iMessage isn't just a text messaging app, it also serves as a shared application fabric. The many iOS objects and apps are integrated into iMessage as first-class things that can be securely shared and seamlessly collaborated on between groups of people over the iMessage backbone. It isn't just group chats but also group content. If you have non-iMessage users in the group then all of this is disabled and it reverts to being a text message app. I know many average people that live in those collaboration features without even really thinking about it because they work so much more seamlessly than the alternatives.
- elevatedastalt 3y ago
  In short, all the things Google or Microsoft are criticized for are Okay when Apple does it.
  - jandrewrogers 3y ago
    No, it has rather obvious technical implications that people like to pretend do not exist. Those features people use are effectively not portable to other platforms short of making iOS run on other people's hardware. Sure, the messaging might be portable, ignoring the security concerns, but iMessage is used for a lot more than that. In short, any portable version would still be nerfed, just slightly less nerfed than the current situation. The green bubbles would still be there to indicate that their platform can't support core functionality of iOS inside of iMessage.
    - hpeter 3y ago
      The green bubbles will remain to coerce people to message IOS users over android as people favor blue over ugly green.. It's a marketing gimmick designed to lock users in using network effects. These psychological tricks work the best on teenagers and apple have been targeting kids to make them customers for life.
    - soundnote 3y ago
alberto180 3y ago
It isn't a status symbol in western Europe. Really Every moron can get one with their 30-50€/Mo contracts, and you see many poor people running around with it
- evulhotdog 3y ago
  The same goes for in the US, but it certainly is portrayed different there.

troupo 3y ago

> This is why the the iPhone is still a status symbol among the middle class and richest people in the EU wat? iPhone costs as much as an equivalent Android (and has for some time), and since you can get it with your phone subscription for a rather low monthly payment, it hasn't been a status symbol for a decade or more.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
>iPhone costs as much as an equivalent Android Only flagships, But decent Androids can be had for much less than an iPhone. Like the Samsung A54 for example. Apple doesn't have ~300 Euro phones with OLED screens in its offer.
- troupo 3y ago
  Yes, but that doesn't make them "status phones for middle class people". The latest iPhone 15 can be had for 30 EUR/month even in Sweden (Sweden is very expensive) [1]. That's a single lunch for two. [1] https://www.tre.se/handla/mobiltelefoner/apple/iphone-15 https://www.tre.se/handla/mobiltelefoner/apple/iphone-15
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    Sweden also has some of the highest salaries in Europe/the world, that's why they're not a status symbol, because even a pizza delivery boy can afford an iPhone 15 Pro Max. But they very much are a status symbol in less developed countries with lower wages: Eastern Europe, Latin America, etc. Lower and middle class people there will save for over a year just to get the latest iPhone, which is why there's a huge market there for clones.
    - troupo 3y ago
      The original claim was about "the EU" as a whole. Now it's "less developed countries with lowest wages". Even in Eastern Europe it's much less of a status symbol than let's say 10 years ago: installment plans are much more affordable to a larger part of the population. Source: am from Eastern Europe (though I live in Sweden now). > Lower and middle class people there will save for over a year just to get the latest iPhone Yup, because the poor unwashed masses don't have discounts, instalment plans or phones included with subscriptions. Oh wait, they do.
      - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        Affordable doesn't mean financially sound. Going in debt to buy a phone you can't afford outright in cash, means you're too poor to afford it, that's why is a status symbol.
        troupo 3y ago
        > Affordable doesn't mean financially sound. I can't keep up with goalposts moving speed in this conversation
- acdha 3y ago
  > Apple doesn't have ~300 Euro phones with OLED screens in its offer. Sure they do, the iPhone 12 is still widely available and it’s at least twice as fast as an A54. The prestige argument just hold up when you look at the data unless you scope it to say flagships. Google and Samsung charge just as much, and they have the same decreasingly small prestige that conveys. We’re 15 years into the touchscreen era so you’re just not impressing anyone.
  - dns_snek 3y ago
    iPhone 12 costs almost twice as much as Samsung A54.
    - threeseed 3y ago
      At least here in Australia for RRP, iPhone 12 is 20% more expensive.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    >Sure they do, the iPhone 12 is still widely available and it’s at least twice as fast as an A54. The iPhone 12 doesn't cost 300 Euros, it's 500 Euros and only comes with a dinky 64GB RAM base vs 128GB on the cheaper Samsung.
    - acdha 3y ago
      Okay, let’s assume the prices I got on Amazon were scammers. Here’s your “€300” A54 at €430: https://www.worten.pt/produtos/smartphone-samsung-galaxy-a54-5g-6-4-8-gb-128-gb-graphite-7731151 https://www.worten.pt/produtos/smartphone-samsung-galaxy-a54... Here’s the iPhone 12 at €550: https://www.worten.pt/produtos/iphone-12-apple-6-1-64-gb-preto-7256276 https://www.worten.pt/produtos/iphone-12-apple-6-1-64-gb-pre... Now, maybe that extra hundred euros is really critical to you but on the other hand the iPhone will have a service life years longer (it’s over twice as fast), but also neither of these is in a price range where you’re moving into prestige territory. This is like arguing Toyota vs. VW in an alternate universe where Mercedes and Bentley don’t exist. Phones are an impressively flat market in that regard: Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai have the same phones as millions of people who earn many orders of magnitude less than either of them.
- GeekyBear 3y ago
  > decent Androids can be had for much less than an iPhone The Android ecosystem didn't have a $399 Android device in 2016 that is still getting first party security updates today. The 2016 iPhone SE has worked out to ~$50 per supported year.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    Non techie people who buy phones in the real world don't care about stuf they can't see or feel or don't understand, like long SW updates, since it's not like Androids stop working once you stop getting updates. They do care about stuff the can actually see, like having big bright high resolution OLLED display, not that dim low-res display on the SE pulled straight out of a 2008 parts bin. Especially that phones are now the main computing and content consumption platforms for most people. and if you put a 6.2 inch 1000 nits 1080p OLED vs 4.7 inch 720p 400 nits IPS, the difference will be as big as the grand canion and sway purchasing decisions way more than years of SW updates.
    - GeekyBear 3y ago
      > Non techie people who buy phones in the real world don't care about stuf they can't see or feel or don't understand Non techie folks care when their insecure phone allows something as important as their bank account to be hacked. The original Google Pixel also came out in 2016, and was completely dropped from support at the end of 2019.
      - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        >Non techie folks care when their insecure phone allows something as important as their bank account to be hacked. How many times are we gonna play this boogieman card? As if everyone gets their bank account instantly emptied by hackers the moment their Android is a day out of it's support window. How many times has that actually happened to users of older un-updated Androids in the real world, documented? I know about over half a dozen people with out of date Androids and they seem to still be solvent with their banks accounts intact. One of them is me. Hackers in the real world wanting to steal your savings are more likely to use phishing to get you to hand over your banking credentials voluntarily, rather than to build some elaborate malware targeting some unpatched flaw in your phone's OS to steal your banking credentials. Not that the latter isn't a risk, but it's being blown way out of proportion. >The original Google Pixel also came out in 2016, and was completely dropped from support at the end of 2019. We're talking here about buying modern phones today, not buying phones from the past. Google and Samsung did a 180 recently where they promise 7 years of updates to their lates phones. What argument are you gonna use 6 years from when those phones will still get updates?
lxgr 3y ago
> since you can get it with your phone subscription for a rather low monthly payment This is not (anymore) how people buy their phones in many countries. Even on relatively expensive post-paid plans in some European countries, you don't get a discounted phone anymore: All they offer is an interest-free installment plan. > iPhone costs as much as an equivalent Android What's an equivalent iPhone to e.g. a Galaxy A54 (~1 year old, EUR ~300-350)? The iPhone SE (2022) is twice as old and starts at EUR 500.
- danaris 3y ago
  I think you may have misunderstood the GP. Apple offers the ability to buy the iPhone with $0 down over (IIRC) 24 months—making that iPhone SE cost ~$21/month. It has nothing to do with the contract discounts that phone providers used to offer.
  - lxgr 3y ago
    > It has nothing to do with the contract discounts that phone providers used to offer. It has a lot to do with that. Many US providers offer significant discounts on iPhones when buying them on a (new or renewed) contract. This was a very commonplace thing in Europe as well, but I believe it's become less common. Installment payments change nothing about the base price.
    - danaris 3y ago
      No, that's true; they don't. But they still make it much more accessible to buy an iPhone for someone who doesn't have €500 or $1000 or whatever at one time to comfortably spend on one. The idea that iPhones could be a meaningful "status symbol" by this point in their lifetime, given all the ways one can obtain one cheaply if that is what one wants, and the percentage of people who own them, just doesn't hold up under scrutiny. It's a meme repeated by people who need some reason to believe that people don't buy Apple's products on their own merits—much like the idea that it's a "cult".
      - lxgr 3y ago

tremarley 3y ago

‘iMessage plays a pivotal role in the success of the iPhone and contributes significantly to Apple's business is inaccurate.’ If you ask many iPhone users why they use an iPhone rather than an Android. They would tell you iMessage first. Many iPhone users won’t even consider an Android, only because of iMessage and no other reason.

SSLy 3y ago
Re-read parent's last sentence.
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  Parent's arguing that a minority of users have different motives and view it as a Veblen good. Might be true, but what about the rest of the iPhone users ?
wkat4242 3y ago
Not in Europe. Almost nobody uses iMessage here. It's because the marketshare of Apple is much lower in most EU countries. I'm glad because I use android also.
threeseed 3y ago
> If you ask many iPhone users why they use an iPhone rather than an Android. They would tell you iMessage first. Likewise if you ask many iPhone users they won't tell you iMessage first. That's the magic and wonder of meaningless anecdotes.

HDThoreaun 3y ago

iMessage popularity has little to do with status and everything to do with iPhone users refusing to use other messaging apps. If you want to text an iPhone and you don’t have iMessage chances are you will be forced to use sms which is utterly trash. I’ve been unable to convince my friends to use a messaging app so if I want to text them I pretty much need an iPhone.

troupo 3y ago
Strange then that iMessage didn't even qualify for DMA in EU by the number of users? ;)
lxgr 3y ago
The fact that it's impossible to convince any of your friends to use something that works with all phones and not just iPhones arguably does have something to do with status. In Europe, where less than half of all people (across social strata) use iPhones/iOS, this simply doesn't fly, so there is no "green bubble problem".
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  I think its more about the cultural critical mass than status. Most people already feel they have too many apps cluttering their screen, and at least in the US they have friends who only use iMessage, so they need iMessage. Once youve decided you need iMessage pretty easy to also decide not to bother with other messaging apps. The network effect is a huge problem for getting people to switch.

breather 3y ago

I'd say imessage (and facetime) is about half of why I use an iphone in the end. It's just very good at communicating with my social network, which predominately uses iphones.

ghaff 3y ago
As someone in the US, it's totally irrelevant. I never use Facetime and Imessage vs. SMS is a just don't care. If I occasionally communicate internationally, it's via Whatsapp or Facebook Messenger.
- breather 3y ago
  > I never use Facetime Do you ever video chat with friends or family? In my experience this is almost entirely over FaceTime, though zoom had its moment there during the lockdown.
  - cozzyd 3y ago
    I use a combination of Google Meet and Whatsapp for video calls...
  - ghaff 3y ago
    No. My friends groups will setup free Zoom calls now and then.
- eeghyrdcg 3y ago
  It kind of sounds like you’re saying “as a representative sample of people in the US”. If this is the case you are wrong — plenty of people use these services. If you’re just saying “you” then sure whatever, I put salsa on my toast.

jandrewrogers 3y ago

I also use WhatsApp and Signal as a daily driver. iMessage is legitimately superior to all other messaging platforms I've used, and it isn't close. iMessage isn't just a text messaging app, it also serves as a shared application fabric. The many iOS objects and apps are integrated into iMessage as first-class things that can be securely shared and seamlessly collaborated on between groups of people over the iMessage backbone. It isn't just group chats but also group content. If you have non-iMessage users in the group then all of this is disabled and it reverts to being a text message app. I know many average people that live in those collaboration features without even really thinking about it because they work so much more seamlessly than the alternatives.

elevatedastalt 3y ago
In short, all the things Google or Microsoft are criticized for are Okay when Apple does it.
- jandrewrogers 3y ago
  No, it has rather obvious technical implications that people like to pretend do not exist. Those features people use are effectively not portable to other platforms short of making iOS run on other people's hardware. Sure, the messaging might be portable, ignoring the security concerns, but iMessage is used for a lot more than that. In short, any portable version would still be nerfed, just slightly less nerfed than the current situation. The green bubbles would still be there to indicate that their platform can't support core functionality of iOS inside of iMessage.
  - hpeter 3y ago
    The green bubbles will remain to coerce people to message IOS users over android as people favor blue over ugly green.. It's a marketing gimmick designed to lock users in using network effects. These psychological tricks work the best on teenagers and apple have been targeting kids to make them customers for life.
  - soundnote 3y ago

alberto180 3y ago

It isn't a status symbol in western Europe. Really Every moron can get one with their 30-50€/Mo contracts, and you see many poor people running around with it

evulhotdog 3y ago
The same goes for in the US, but it certainly is portrayed different there.