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What surprises me is that while WhatsApp has become an "everything" app in many parts of the world, much like WeChat in China, it has not done so in the US. In

What surprises me is that while WhatsApp has become an "everything" app in many parts of the world, much like WeChat in China, it has not done so in the US. In fact, I don't know anyone in the US who uses WhatsApp "internally" (the only times I use it is to communicate with people outside the US). The description of WhatsApp here is exactly what Elon wanted X to become (which clearly didn't and almost certainly now won't happen). But I'm curious as to why such as "super-app" hasn't taken root in the US like it has elsewhere.

itikasp 2y ago
Hi, I am one of the editors of this story, and we have also thought about this. In my opinion, one of the reasons why WhatsApp hasn't become the "everything app" in the US is because Apple/iOS devices are very popular in the country, where as in much of the world, Android is popular thanks to the availability of cheaper devices. Apple offers a suit of apps and features, including Facetime, that's not available for Android users, which adds to the popularity of WhatsApp.
- brudgers 2y ago
  Facetime was announced as an intended open standard. Shortly, Apple realized their advantage of keeping it closed.
  - Uehreka 2y ago
    Idk how much of an advantage this has turned out to be. Like GP said, FaceTime is not as popular outside of the US because it isn’t on Android. Even its US popularity is limited by the fact that it doesn’t work with Android/PC users, mandating that you have another app (which likely works as well as FaceTime) on hand for those situations. I think this is more of an example of them shooting themselves in the foot for no advantage, but not caring because they have like 300 feet.
  - Jtsummers 2y ago
    A patent lawsuit kept them from opening it up at the time. I think it's only recently been resolved.
    - viraptor 2y ago
      This is such a weird claim getting repeated. If they were infringing, opening the protocol wouldn't change that fact. They didn't even have to provide the client for other platforms, so their unit count wouldn't be increased for damages.
      - Jtsummers 2y ago
        Jobs' statement at the time was the intent to make it a published standard. If that standard was patent encumbered (or could be claimed to be, as the suit did) then it would be pretty hard to convince other people to implement that standard, and difficult to get a standards body to actually publish it. Why would Google, MS, or anyone else implement something if it'd get them bogged down in the same lawsuits Apple was already dealing with?
        viraptor 2y ago
        There's lots of standards covered by patents. Gif included https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF
        Jtsummers 2y ago
        Yes, which is a great example of a patent encumbered standard creating problems for people implementing the standard. Considering FaceTime postdates the GIF experience, I'm sure plenty of corporate lawyers understood the problem much better.
      - toast0 2y ago
        As a matter of policy, I avoid looking into details of patents, but from the title, I thought the patent was about something the server does, routing or something? In which case, infringement or licensing would scale with the number of users, not the number of shipped clients. This was around the same time that Apple was charging for OS upgrades, at least on Mac, and I think they wouldn't have wanted to pay for something they were providing for free.
- loloquwowndueo 2y ago
  An interesting tidbit is that WhatsApp actually predates FaceTime and iMessage, and thus it was one of the earliest iPhone apps that allowed sending text messages over data as opposed to SMS. Interoperability with Android was a plus. I was tremendously pissed off when I moved from a BlackBerry (with blackberry messenger and “free over data” messaging) to an iPhone in 2008 and had to go back to paying per sms sent. The moment WhatsApp became available I got it (and paid for it!) and have been using it ever since. I wonder what other iPhone users did for data messaging before iMessage became available.
  - epx 2y ago
    At least here in Brazil, WhatsApp consolidated its position by working well in feature phones that ran J2ME and dominated the low-end market before Android. It took testing and adaptation to each and every available phone (as far as I can remember, J2ME was kind of a loose standard so developing a J2ME on one device did not guarantee it ran well, or at all, in any other). This, coupled with the possibility of eliding the outrageous SMS rates and the availability of EDGE data plans.
    - toast0 2y ago
      WhatsApp ran on Nokia S40, which is J2ME, but it did not run on other J2ME phones (unless there was some way to put the s40 app bundle on them? I never heard about that). There was a period of time where someone was selling low end phones with an unauthorized and incomplete client built in... In addition to not supporting group messages, it apparently had a backdoor to remote send spam.
  - Zak 2y ago
    I found it surprising at the time that instant messaging apps that originated on PCs (ICQ, AIM, Skype, etc...) did not get widely adopted for this role despite most of the well-known ones releasing iOS and Android versions at the time.
    - hocuspocus 2y ago
      ICQ and AIM were pretty much dead already. Microsoft really missed an opportunity, I remember using a third party app for Messenger and the mobile experience wasn't great. Skype was too focused on voice and video calls, not seen as an instant messaging app, even though it could very well have been. The biggest fumble really comes from Google though. I was using Google Talk as my main messaging app on PC, and Android had pretty much everything ready before iOS, including video chat over 3G. However Google went through a pointless revamp with Hangouts and never managed a convincing SMS integration.
- orf 2y ago
  It’s pretty simple: SMS functionality sucked and was super expensive. Before WhatsApp there was blackberry messenger (BBM). When I was growing up kids were running around with blackberry phones, marketed at businessmen, purely for BBM. WhatsApp was just this, except on a platform that didn’t suck. WhatsApp also predates iMessage and FaceTime.
  - lostlogin 2y ago
    > WhatsApp also predates iMessage and FaceTime. I was surprised to find this accurate. Though the lineage for a Mac user would likely include Messages and iChat, which go back further. iChat: 2002 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IChat https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IChat Messages: 2007 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messages_(Apple) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messages_(Apple) iMessage: 2011 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMessage https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMessage WhatsApp: 2009 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhatsApp https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhatsApp
    - emchammer 2y ago
      Tidbit: The original iChat had an IPv6 link-local messaging function which worked entirely without Internet access or servers.
      - steve1977 2y ago
        There also was an iChat server for Mac OS X Server IIRC.
    - steve1977 2y ago
      But those were not mobile services, more like Apple's implementation of ICQ or MSN Messenger.
- akira2501 2y ago
  Do you think it could be that general purpose computers tend to exist as household items here moreso than in other parts of the world? I see my phone as a small extension of a much larger and more capable computing base. Is that view even possible in other parts of the world?
  - mixmastamyk 2y ago
    Most folks no longer need a general purpose computer, like they once did to participate.
- okanat 2y ago
  WhatsApp was there before Apple. There was even Symbian versions of it. The reason it got so popular in other counties is the extortionate pricing of SMSes. WhatsApp used (and still uses) very little data and with the lowest level data tariff you would still get more messaging quota. Moreover it costed nothing when WiFi on phones became a thing. Then sending pictures for free became a thing too. They were also a smaller company and it didn't bother people to pay a small amount for all of the benefits they got.
- josu 2y ago
  The US was one of the few countries in the world where there were unlimited SMS plans. So by the time Whatsapp came around instant free messaging was already ubiquitous. This wasn't the case for most other regions, where Whatsapp actually brought free unlimited mobile messaging.
  - comprev 2y ago
    WhatsApp was a paid product to start with.
    - notahacker 2y ago
      It cost ~$1 (initially a one time fee, later joiners paid annually). Depending on your SMS plan, that might be paid for with the first 10 messages you sent. There was zero additional cost to use to send a lot of messages, including pictures and group messages. This was quite different to most mobile contracts at the time
      - viraptor 2y ago
        It wasn't even enforced though. Charged only after a year, but you could reinstall and get another year free.
    - lxgr 2y ago
      I've used it at that time, and somehow they never managed to actually charge me (and I didn't go out of my way to avoid paying).
  - carlosroman101 2y ago
    Not sure how true this is as I had unlimited SMS in the UK in 2000. I struggled to keep that plan as the original provider got bought by O2. Luckily when it happened lots of providers provided enough SMS that was basically "unlimited". The problem for me was the cost of accessing no wap web pages.
  - lxgr 2y ago
    Importantly these also usually included unlimited media messages (MMS) early on. Flat rate plans in Europe started appearing a bit later and usually never included MMS, so it was calls and texts only, but no photos. WhatsApp changed that.
- theshackleford 2y ago
  Even in my country where iOS reigns supreme, there is very minimal usage of regular SMS/iOS messages functionality. Almost everyone uses some kind of 3rd party app.
- throw310822 2y ago
  > because Apple/iOS devices are very popular in the country Apple is popular also in Europe, and Android has a 43% market share in the US. But in Europe nobody would use a messaging system that is broken for 40% of their contacts. So either in the US there is no intersection between the social circles of people that use Android vs Apple (highly improbable) or something in the US culture makes people willing to cripple their own experience in order to impose a tax on those in the outgroup.
  - immibis 2y ago
    I read a comment recently on Hacker News that a pesticide or herbicide popular in the US and banned in the EU also happened to be an endocrine disruptor in humans, for a hormone responsible for empathy (oxytocin). Don't know if it's true.
  - ikr678 2y ago
    The 'something in US culture' is conspicuous consumption and a perception that apple are superior and you shouldnt have to go out of your way to interact with poor android users.
    - throw310822 2y ago
      I wonder if this is somehow related with the healthcare policies: a country where everyone is willing to pay extortionate prices for medical care, sometimes to the point of financial ruin, so that those who are "undeserving" don't get it for free.
  - lxgr 2y ago
    SMS/MMS is free in almost all phone plans in the US, and I have absolutely no trouble believing that people would subject themselves to a very bad messaging experience if that's the default that comes with their phone, as long as it's free. If I were to come up with a social/economic theory to further back that, my guess would probably be that phone users in the US have a "full service mentality" much more than in the rest of the world: Buying a phone on a (very expensive) monthly plan that subsidizes the device is much more common than elsewhere, and historically, SIM cards weren't even a thing, so devices were tied to a given network and (to some extent) even a subscriber much more than in the rest of the world. That would logically extend to people not expecting to have to install a third-party app for what they consider to be "basic phone functionality".
- jorvi 2y ago
  WhatsApp has not become the "everything app" in the EU either? People use it for chatting with people, groups of people, or businesses. Virtually no one uses the Status or Communities feature. I have 289 people in my phone book right now, 1 of them occasionally posts on Status when on vacation. Of 25 people I quickly checked with, not one of them uses Communities.
  - immibis 2y ago
    This. It's just a replacement SMS and phone app. It's not an everything app.
  - lxgr 2y ago
    I vaguely remember hearing that status updates are much more popular in other markets. I could imagine the same for channels, as WhatsApp is zero-rated on many data plans in the developing world (as well as for in-flight Wi-Fi plans in more and more airlines!), which would make that an economical way of staying up to date on news.
- Yeul 2y ago
  Apple could release a fully functional iMessage for Android if they wanted to- hell the EU council would send them a cake if they did that. One can speculate why they don't.
  - hocuspocus 2y ago
    The EU doesn't care. The DMA doesn't apply to iMessage, its market share is too small.
deergomoo 2y ago
It seems to be quite variable over the world. WhatsApp is massive here in the UK but pretty much only as a chat app.
Veserv 2y ago
Payments. The sticky part of "everything" app is the payments platform. With a payments platform you have a internal "funded" ecosystem. Anybody who can not take payments from the "everything" app has a incentive to get inside so they can get paid. In many countries, the "everything" app contains, what in the US would be called, a bank. This is basically illegal in the USA. US Banks are extremely stringently regulated to the point where many international banks do not even want to take US customers because that would subject them to US laws about banks. That is how insanely challenging it is for literal banks with decades of past and current experience to manage the regulations. "Move fast and break things" would get "Go directly to jail, do not pass go". Even money transmitter licenses like Paypal and Venmo are extremely challenging. And even those companies try really hard to make sure they do not get classified as a bank. Trying to graft on a social platform onto a bank or a money transmitter would make the entire social platform subject to bank/money transmitter business restrictions which is almost certainly doomed legally. It is not like these companies do not know to add payments, it is just so insanely hard that even the 900 pound gorillas do not want to mess with Godzilla.
- orf 2y ago
  Nope - nobody in Europe uses WhatsApp as a payments platform. Does it even have one? It succeeded because it was around at the time where SMS messages where expensive, but smart phones where exploding in popularity.
  - Veserv 2y ago
    WhatsApp is not a "everything" platform in most of Europe. Do you open WhatsApp to play music, games, order takeout, order online, pay for rent? It is just a very popular chat application in most of Europe in contrast to a "everything" app like WeChat where you do all of those things. [1] https://www.whatsapp.com/payments/in https://www.whatsapp.com/payments/in
    - orf 2y ago
      Nope, but by that definition almost no countries have an “everything app”. There’s like, one example in a very unique market? It’s the “everything app” for messaging, friends and groups.
Barrin92 2y ago
>But I'm curious as to why such as "super-app" hasn't taken root in the US like it has elsewhere. because there's a lot more traditional banking and business infrastructure in the US or Europe than there is in China or India, so the latter just leapfrogged over it and the experience of using Alipay or running your business of Whatsapp is just much better than any legacy institution in those countries. People in countries with more established ways of doing things are both too used to and don't have that much of an incentive to switch because most stuff works sort of okay. Same reason why WhatsApp adoption itself is lower in the US and sms based messaging held out so long. The US had cheap sms plans earlier so people were less eager to switch while everyone else just jumped to internet based messaging.
Zak 2y ago
I'm reasonably confident WhatsApp never caught on in the USA because most American phone plans had unlimited SMS in the early 2010s when WhatsApp's popularity was growing elsewhere. International messaging was probably also a big driver in Europe, but less relevant in other markets.
- hocuspocus 2y ago
  International messaging is still relevant in many parts of the world that don't necessarily need to message neighboring countries, but have a big diaspora.
  - Zak 2y ago
    Sure. Americans with close or many international contacts almost certainly use an internet-based chat/voice app with those contacts. That's not a large enough percentage than any one messaging app is a viable option for a group chat involving a dozen randomly-selected Americans. Almost every time, one or two of them will steadfastly refuse to install any app and insist on using MMS.
  - toast0 2y ago
    Yeah, but the US is pretty insular. Times are different now, but my grandparents who immigrated basically didn't communicate with the old country in my lifetime. If roughly 15% of the US population is immigrants [1], and not all of them communicate across borders, and very few non-immigtants communicate cross borders there's not a whole lot of demand for a product that reduces costs of cross border messaging in the US. As an early employee if anyone knew about WhatsApp, they almost certainly were a younger immigrant. Everyone else was like 'why would I use that?, I have unlimited texts' or they were using BBM. [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/09/27/u-s-immigrant-population-in-2023-saw-largest-increase-in-more-than-20-years/sr_2024-09-26_immigrant-growth-2023_chart/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/09/27/u-s-immig...
- kazen44 2y ago
  yes, roaming coasts where still a thing inside the EU, so messaging relatives or friends while on holiday sucked because of the enormous pricing for roaming. (even while using SMS!. I remember paying rougly 30 euros to send a couple of hundred text messages and have a couple of minutes ( like half an hour or something) while on holiday in france. thankfully, roaming got abolished in the first half of the 2010's thank to an EU directive, but at that time whatsapp was already very large across the EU.
Mond_ 2y ago
This isn't really what an "everything app" is. WhatsApp is a chat app (+ some barebones community stuff, which Telegram and Discord also have). To be an everything app, it needs to have, at the very least, a built-in payment system, fully featured social media content (ie. proper feeds and comments, at least on the level of Twitter), and non-trivial integration with other apps, businesses, and/or government entities. (This isn't even getting into eg. paying rent, ordering takeout, playing games, etc.) Calling WhatsApp is just kind of missing the point of the definition.
- spookie 2y ago
  Yeah I fear this is the case really. At most, WhatsApp is a way to communicate with businesses while keeping a separation of concerns for those running them. It is simply better than SMS and is dead simple. You can have a business app that makes this be a separate thing from your personal life while using the same phone. I have seen it used as a way to contact restaurants or local stores, order stuff, but that was the extent of it. Just communication, nothing else. For me, at least, it has only been the messaging app I'm willing to use to be in touch with non-techie friends.
dheera 2y ago
For one, in other countries, people are perfectly okay with doing real business over a messaging app. I saw a doctor in Indonesia once and everything from appointment scheduling to follow up with the doctor was done on WhatsApp. They were okay sending medical tests, records, and bills on WhatsApp as well. In China, same thing, on WeChat. In the US, they want you to register some stupid MyHealth thing, sign some paper documents, and mail follow up shit to your residential address. They won't give you medical records on anything other than a fucking CD-ROM, even in 2024. Somehow in the US, a messaging app isn't "official" enough, and there's going to be the one first amendment brat* that doesn't want to install WhatsApp for privacy reasons. * I say this jokingly, and do think we need to be harsher on corporations. However, my point is that in collectivist countries like Indonesia/China, if you don't install WhatsApp/WeChat or whatever is the chosen national app, you'll be the outcast and nobody will help you. The collectivist societies tend to embrace these apps for their convenience, rather than question their terms and conditions.
- tuna74 2y ago
  "In the US, they want you to register some stupid MyHealth thing, sign some paper documents, and mail follow up shit to your residential address. They won't give you medical records on anything other than a fucking CD-ROM, even in 2024. Somehow in the US, a messaging app isn't "official" enough, and there's going to be the one first amendment brat* that doesn't want to install WhatsApp for privacy reasons." That is because you don't have any good online ID authenticator. Something like BankId in Sweden is so incredibly practical in a lot of ways.
  - dheera 2y ago
    bankid.com: "To get a BankID, you must have a Swedish personal identity number" What do non-citizens use in Sweden to get around? The "everything apps" of places that have them aren't usually restricted to only citizens (though some admittedly have shitty UIs for non-citizens)
    - wasmitnetzen 2y ago
      Everyone who's a permanent resident in Sweden gets a personal identity number, it's not tied to your citizenship. That would be illegal anyway, at least for citizens of other EU countries. There's a lower-level, different number, which is less powerful, but easier to get.
NoLinkToMe 2y ago
It’s the first time I hear that Whatsapp is already an everything app. Ive used Whatsapp for about 14 years or so on a daily basis as my main app. But it’s just chat for me, and about 30% of my non-professional calls. And I use the share location feature a lot when meeting friends. But that’s about it. But banking, social media, ID/login, maps, albums, browsing etc I all do outside of whatsapp.
- viraptor 2y ago
  Yup, that claim went a bit far. I mean, the company account API exists and you can do buttons and automation and lots of companies do support this way. (All my contact with Dell support was over WhatsApp) So the tech is there, but the actual deployment of it isn't that big.
  - inemesitaffia 2y ago
    Depends on your country. A particular banking service option I use is only available on WhatsApp
- insane_dreamer 2y ago
  Here's where the comparison with WeChat maybe breaks down. I lived in China for years, right during the time that WeChat (WeiXin) came out and evolved to become the "everything" app (vanquishing Weibo and others). But I've only used WhatsApp for text messages and didn't even know that it had all these other features until I read this article. So maybe it isn't really comparable to WeChat in that sense -- or maybe it is, I don't really know actually.
richardw 2y ago
Honestly, it was just what it enabled. U.S. had cheap/free texting, so the network effect of just staying where you are was huge. Outside the US, there was only expensive texting so there was a latent need. A friend asked me to use it first. She's not a techie, but she wasn't earning much and my first instinct was a mild annoyance that she was being cheap and trying to get me to use this other weird thing. What I had "worked" and had everyone on it. But ok, I'll try it. Became an early-ish adopter, spoke with her and a few people, over time it grew and utterly replaced texts. For friends, work, groups. If you try texting there, you're a dinosaur. We had no sense of social stigma of blue/green ticks. Everyone had the same ticks. Moved to Australia and now I have to check. It's mostly WhatsApp but still some texts, and I have to check if someone is on WhatsApp rather than assume. Once or twice I've had to send on both channels. But there are WhatsApp groups everywhere, so no idea why this texting thing is still alive. Notice and compare your own instincts when you read this. You might have the opposite reaction depending on where you are. And for startups, it's whether you can land and enable a benefit before the existing company builds it. Speed vs distribution. Texting was so big a source of revenue that the local network providers kept the price high and basically lost it all. They could have dropped the price to where network effects prevented movement. The comfort of having the buttons and features and network where you expect them is massive.
wenc 2y ago
This is why travel is so important -- it gets us out of our bubbles. Once I was brainstorming with a German colleague about a new business chat feature, and he said we should target WhatsApp as a channel. My American colleagues were like, "No one uses that these days." But Americans have little idea how popular WhatsApp really is in Europe, and Brazil (where it's colloquially called Zappy Zappy), and vast swaths of the world. The American experience isn't as normative as we assume. I only know this because I'm part of a diaspora network and I have contacts from all over the world -- FB Messenger and iMessage are not as popular as we think outside of certain high GDP countries. Conversely, some suggested targeting iOS in Germany, but my German colleague immediately said that iOS marketshare in Germany is actually fairly low. That surprised me but he was right. https://www.statista.com/statistics/461900/android-vs-ios-market-share-in-smartphone-sales-germany/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/461900/android-vs-ios-ma... Even France, with its reputation for liking premium products, does not have a high iOS market share. Japan does have a very high iOS market share however because they appreciate craftsmanship, and due to Softbank's efforts in the country. I remember the early days of WhatsApp -- it was the non-SMS messaging platform of choice in an era when phone plans changed for texting.
- spookie 2y ago
  Apple devices cost more in Europe, a jump high enough that you might as well consider the competition. I'm taking VAT into account. That and, well... Google has been more supportive of EU countries than Apple. Apple maps was useless in the EU for a long time. Plus horrendous support across the EU. If you are in a big city, yeah you will find an Apple Store, otherwise tough luck. It has nothing to do with craftmanship.
  - vladvasiliu 2y ago
    I think the only point that stands is the price. Apple products are indeed more expensive in France than in the US. However, Google Maps runs fine on iOS and you can purchase Apple products from other retailers and they will also handle warranty claims. None of my Apple products were bought from an Apple Store.
narrator 2y ago
Being the rare American Android person, I use it, Signal and Telegram to communicate with Iphone people since IMessage SMS integration is badly crippled.
madeofpalk 2y ago
> The description of WhatsApp here is exactly what Elon wanted X to become I don't know what an "everything app" is, but that's not my experience with WhatsApp in Europe. It's just how you text or call everyone or businesses, but there's no payments or anything else going on beyond perhaps the occasional business chatbot. But even then, most 'businesses' I interact with over WhatsApp is just some person with a phone.
- insane_dreamer 2y ago
  I think Elon's target was WeChat, and the article implied that WhatsApp had essentially the same functionality as WeChat, but that may not actually be the case, or maybe only in some countries like Brazil.
1123581321 2y ago
When Facebook bought WhatsApp, either Facebook or WhatsApp was the top social network in just about every country. It was a critical purchase for Facebook that locked out competitors globally for years. I can’t find the map now; if anyone knows what I’m talking about I hope they can share it. Free or cheap texting hamstrung WhatsApp’s growth in some countries like the US. It was better in countries where cell plans were expensive because data didn’t meter per communication like SMS and WhatsApp was efficient. WhatsApp isn’t an everything app like WeChat.

itikasp 2y ago

Hi, I am one of the editors of this story, and we have also thought about this. In my opinion, one of the reasons why WhatsApp hasn't become the "everything app" in the US is because Apple/iOS devices are very popular in the country, where as in much of the world, Android is popular thanks to the availability of cheaper devices. Apple offers a suit of apps and features, including Facetime, that's not available for Android users, which adds to the popularity of WhatsApp.

brudgers 2y ago
Facetime was announced as an intended open standard. Shortly, Apple realized their advantage of keeping it closed.
- Uehreka 2y ago
  Idk how much of an advantage this has turned out to be. Like GP said, FaceTime is not as popular outside of the US because it isn’t on Android. Even its US popularity is limited by the fact that it doesn’t work with Android/PC users, mandating that you have another app (which likely works as well as FaceTime) on hand for those situations. I think this is more of an example of them shooting themselves in the foot for no advantage, but not caring because they have like 300 feet.
- Jtsummers 2y ago
  A patent lawsuit kept them from opening it up at the time. I think it's only recently been resolved.
  - viraptor 2y ago
    This is such a weird claim getting repeated. If they were infringing, opening the protocol wouldn't change that fact. They didn't even have to provide the client for other platforms, so their unit count wouldn't be increased for damages.
    - Jtsummers 2y ago
      Jobs' statement at the time was the intent to make it a published standard. If that standard was patent encumbered (or could be claimed to be, as the suit did) then it would be pretty hard to convince other people to implement that standard, and difficult to get a standards body to actually publish it. Why would Google, MS, or anyone else implement something if it'd get them bogged down in the same lawsuits Apple was already dealing with?
      - viraptor 2y ago
        There's lots of standards covered by patents. Gif included https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF
        Jtsummers 2y ago
        Yes, which is a great example of a patent encumbered standard creating problems for people implementing the standard. Considering FaceTime postdates the GIF experience, I'm sure plenty of corporate lawyers understood the problem much better.
    - toast0 2y ago
      As a matter of policy, I avoid looking into details of patents, but from the title, I thought the patent was about something the server does, routing or something? In which case, infringement or licensing would scale with the number of users, not the number of shipped clients. This was around the same time that Apple was charging for OS upgrades, at least on Mac, and I think they wouldn't have wanted to pay for something they were providing for free.
loloquwowndueo 2y ago
An interesting tidbit is that WhatsApp actually predates FaceTime and iMessage, and thus it was one of the earliest iPhone apps that allowed sending text messages over data as opposed to SMS. Interoperability with Android was a plus. I was tremendously pissed off when I moved from a BlackBerry (with blackberry messenger and “free over data” messaging) to an iPhone in 2008 and had to go back to paying per sms sent. The moment WhatsApp became available I got it (and paid for it!) and have been using it ever since. I wonder what other iPhone users did for data messaging before iMessage became available.
- epx 2y ago
  At least here in Brazil, WhatsApp consolidated its position by working well in feature phones that ran J2ME and dominated the low-end market before Android. It took testing and adaptation to each and every available phone (as far as I can remember, J2ME was kind of a loose standard so developing a J2ME on one device did not guarantee it ran well, or at all, in any other). This, coupled with the possibility of eliding the outrageous SMS rates and the availability of EDGE data plans.
  - toast0 2y ago
    WhatsApp ran on Nokia S40, which is J2ME, but it did not run on other J2ME phones (unless there was some way to put the s40 app bundle on them? I never heard about that). There was a period of time where someone was selling low end phones with an unauthorized and incomplete client built in... In addition to not supporting group messages, it apparently had a backdoor to remote send spam.
- Zak 2y ago
  I found it surprising at the time that instant messaging apps that originated on PCs (ICQ, AIM, Skype, etc...) did not get widely adopted for this role despite most of the well-known ones releasing iOS and Android versions at the time.
  - hocuspocus 2y ago
    ICQ and AIM were pretty much dead already. Microsoft really missed an opportunity, I remember using a third party app for Messenger and the mobile experience wasn't great. Skype was too focused on voice and video calls, not seen as an instant messaging app, even though it could very well have been. The biggest fumble really comes from Google though. I was using Google Talk as my main messaging app on PC, and Android had pretty much everything ready before iOS, including video chat over 3G. However Google went through a pointless revamp with Hangouts and never managed a convincing SMS integration.
orf 2y ago
It’s pretty simple: SMS functionality sucked and was super expensive. Before WhatsApp there was blackberry messenger (BBM). When I was growing up kids were running around with blackberry phones, marketed at businessmen, purely for BBM. WhatsApp was just this, except on a platform that didn’t suck. WhatsApp also predates iMessage and FaceTime.
- lostlogin 2y ago
  > WhatsApp also predates iMessage and FaceTime. I was surprised to find this accurate. Though the lineage for a Mac user would likely include Messages and iChat, which go back further. iChat: 2002 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IChat https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IChat Messages: 2007 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messages_(Apple) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messages_(Apple) iMessage: 2011 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMessage https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMessage WhatsApp: 2009 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhatsApp https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhatsApp
  - emchammer 2y ago
    Tidbit: The original iChat had an IPv6 link-local messaging function which worked entirely without Internet access or servers.
    - steve1977 2y ago
      There also was an iChat server for Mac OS X Server IIRC.
  - steve1977 2y ago
    But those were not mobile services, more like Apple's implementation of ICQ or MSN Messenger.
akira2501 2y ago
Do you think it could be that general purpose computers tend to exist as household items here moreso than in other parts of the world? I see my phone as a small extension of a much larger and more capable computing base. Is that view even possible in other parts of the world?
- mixmastamyk 2y ago
  Most folks no longer need a general purpose computer, like they once did to participate.
okanat 2y ago
WhatsApp was there before Apple. There was even Symbian versions of it. The reason it got so popular in other counties is the extortionate pricing of SMSes. WhatsApp used (and still uses) very little data and with the lowest level data tariff you would still get more messaging quota. Moreover it costed nothing when WiFi on phones became a thing. Then sending pictures for free became a thing too. They were also a smaller company and it didn't bother people to pay a small amount for all of the benefits they got.
josu 2y ago
The US was one of the few countries in the world where there were unlimited SMS plans. So by the time Whatsapp came around instant free messaging was already ubiquitous. This wasn't the case for most other regions, where Whatsapp actually brought free unlimited mobile messaging.
- comprev 2y ago
  WhatsApp was a paid product to start with.
  - notahacker 2y ago
    It cost ~$1 (initially a one time fee, later joiners paid annually). Depending on your SMS plan, that might be paid for with the first 10 messages you sent. There was zero additional cost to use to send a lot of messages, including pictures and group messages. This was quite different to most mobile contracts at the time
    - viraptor 2y ago
      It wasn't even enforced though. Charged only after a year, but you could reinstall and get another year free.
  - lxgr 2y ago
    I've used it at that time, and somehow they never managed to actually charge me (and I didn't go out of my way to avoid paying).
- carlosroman101 2y ago
  Not sure how true this is as I had unlimited SMS in the UK in 2000. I struggled to keep that plan as the original provider got bought by O2. Luckily when it happened lots of providers provided enough SMS that was basically "unlimited". The problem for me was the cost of accessing no wap web pages.
- lxgr 2y ago
  Importantly these also usually included unlimited media messages (MMS) early on. Flat rate plans in Europe started appearing a bit later and usually never included MMS, so it was calls and texts only, but no photos. WhatsApp changed that.
theshackleford 2y ago
Even in my country where iOS reigns supreme, there is very minimal usage of regular SMS/iOS messages functionality. Almost everyone uses some kind of 3rd party app.
throw310822 2y ago
> because Apple/iOS devices are very popular in the country Apple is popular also in Europe, and Android has a 43% market share in the US. But in Europe nobody would use a messaging system that is broken for 40% of their contacts. So either in the US there is no intersection between the social circles of people that use Android vs Apple (highly improbable) or something in the US culture makes people willing to cripple their own experience in order to impose a tax on those in the outgroup.
- immibis 2y ago
  I read a comment recently on Hacker News that a pesticide or herbicide popular in the US and banned in the EU also happened to be an endocrine disruptor in humans, for a hormone responsible for empathy (oxytocin). Don't know if it's true.
- ikr678 2y ago
  The 'something in US culture' is conspicuous consumption and a perception that apple are superior and you shouldnt have to go out of your way to interact with poor android users.
  - throw310822 2y ago
    I wonder if this is somehow related with the healthcare policies: a country where everyone is willing to pay extortionate prices for medical care, sometimes to the point of financial ruin, so that those who are "undeserving" don't get it for free.
- lxgr 2y ago
  SMS/MMS is free in almost all phone plans in the US, and I have absolutely no trouble believing that people would subject themselves to a very bad messaging experience if that's the default that comes with their phone, as long as it's free. If I were to come up with a social/economic theory to further back that, my guess would probably be that phone users in the US have a "full service mentality" much more than in the rest of the world: Buying a phone on a (very expensive) monthly plan that subsidizes the device is much more common than elsewhere, and historically, SIM cards weren't even a thing, so devices were tied to a given network and (to some extent) even a subscriber much more than in the rest of the world. That would logically extend to people not expecting to have to install a third-party app for what they consider to be "basic phone functionality".
jorvi 2y ago
WhatsApp has not become the "everything app" in the EU either? People use it for chatting with people, groups of people, or businesses. Virtually no one uses the Status or Communities feature. I have 289 people in my phone book right now, 1 of them occasionally posts on Status when on vacation. Of 25 people I quickly checked with, not one of them uses Communities.
- immibis 2y ago
  This. It's just a replacement SMS and phone app. It's not an everything app.
- lxgr 2y ago
  I vaguely remember hearing that status updates are much more popular in other markets. I could imagine the same for channels, as WhatsApp is zero-rated on many data plans in the developing world (as well as for in-flight Wi-Fi plans in more and more airlines!), which would make that an economical way of staying up to date on news.
Yeul 2y ago
Apple could release a fully functional iMessage for Android if they wanted to- hell the EU council would send them a cake if they did that. One can speculate why they don't.
- hocuspocus 2y ago
  The EU doesn't care. The DMA doesn't apply to iMessage, its market share is too small.

deergomoo 2y ago

It seems to be quite variable over the world. WhatsApp is massive here in the UK but pretty much only as a chat app.

Veserv 2y ago

Payments. The sticky part of "everything" app is the payments platform. With a payments platform you have a internal "funded" ecosystem. Anybody who can not take payments from the "everything" app has a incentive to get inside so they can get paid. In many countries, the "everything" app contains, what in the US would be called, a bank. This is basically illegal in the USA. US Banks are extremely stringently regulated to the point where many international banks do not even want to take US customers because that would subject them to US laws about banks. That is how insanely challenging it is for literal banks with decades of past and current experience to manage the regulations. "Move fast and break things" would get "Go directly to jail, do not pass go". Even money transmitter licenses like Paypal and Venmo are extremely challenging. And even those companies try really hard to make sure they do not get classified as a bank. Trying to graft on a social platform onto a bank or a money transmitter would make the entire social platform subject to bank/money transmitter business restrictions which is almost certainly doomed legally. It is not like these companies do not know to add payments, it is just so insanely hard that even the 900 pound gorillas do not want to mess with Godzilla.

orf 2y ago
Nope - nobody in Europe uses WhatsApp as a payments platform. Does it even have one? It succeeded because it was around at the time where SMS messages where expensive, but smart phones where exploding in popularity.
- Veserv 2y ago
  WhatsApp is not a "everything" platform in most of Europe. Do you open WhatsApp to play music, games, order takeout, order online, pay for rent? It is just a very popular chat application in most of Europe in contrast to a "everything" app like WeChat where you do all of those things. [1] https://www.whatsapp.com/payments/in https://www.whatsapp.com/payments/in
  - orf 2y ago
    Nope, but by that definition almost no countries have an “everything app”. There’s like, one example in a very unique market? It’s the “everything app” for messaging, friends and groups.

Barrin92 2y ago

>But I'm curious as to why such as "super-app" hasn't taken root in the US like it has elsewhere. because there's a lot more traditional banking and business infrastructure in the US or Europe than there is in China or India, so the latter just leapfrogged over it and the experience of using Alipay or running your business of Whatsapp is just much better than any legacy institution in those countries. People in countries with more established ways of doing things are both too used to and don't have that much of an incentive to switch because most stuff works sort of okay. Same reason why WhatsApp adoption itself is lower in the US and sms based messaging held out so long. The US had cheap sms plans earlier so people were less eager to switch while everyone else just jumped to internet based messaging.

Zak 2y ago

I'm reasonably confident WhatsApp never caught on in the USA because most American phone plans had unlimited SMS in the early 2010s when WhatsApp's popularity was growing elsewhere. International messaging was probably also a big driver in Europe, but less relevant in other markets.

hocuspocus 2y ago
International messaging is still relevant in many parts of the world that don't necessarily need to message neighboring countries, but have a big diaspora.
- Zak 2y ago
  Sure. Americans with close or many international contacts almost certainly use an internet-based chat/voice app with those contacts. That's not a large enough percentage than any one messaging app is a viable option for a group chat involving a dozen randomly-selected Americans. Almost every time, one or two of them will steadfastly refuse to install any app and insist on using MMS.
- toast0 2y ago
  Yeah, but the US is pretty insular. Times are different now, but my grandparents who immigrated basically didn't communicate with the old country in my lifetime. If roughly 15% of the US population is immigrants [1], and not all of them communicate across borders, and very few non-immigtants communicate cross borders there's not a whole lot of demand for a product that reduces costs of cross border messaging in the US. As an early employee if anyone knew about WhatsApp, they almost certainly were a younger immigrant. Everyone else was like 'why would I use that?, I have unlimited texts' or they were using BBM. [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/09/27/u-s-immigrant-population-in-2023-saw-largest-increase-in-more-than-20-years/sr_2024-09-26_immigrant-growth-2023_chart/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/09/27/u-s-immig...
kazen44 2y ago
yes, roaming coasts where still a thing inside the EU, so messaging relatives or friends while on holiday sucked because of the enormous pricing for roaming. (even while using SMS!. I remember paying rougly 30 euros to send a couple of hundred text messages and have a couple of minutes ( like half an hour or something) while on holiday in france. thankfully, roaming got abolished in the first half of the 2010's thank to an EU directive, but at that time whatsapp was already very large across the EU.

Mond_ 2y ago

This isn't really what an "everything app" is. WhatsApp is a chat app (+ some barebones community stuff, which Telegram and Discord also have). To be an everything app, it needs to have, at the very least, a built-in payment system, fully featured social media content (ie. proper feeds and comments, at least on the level of Twitter), and non-trivial integration with other apps, businesses, and/or government entities. (This isn't even getting into eg. paying rent, ordering takeout, playing games, etc.) Calling WhatsApp is just kind of missing the point of the definition.

spookie 2y ago
Yeah I fear this is the case really. At most, WhatsApp is a way to communicate with businesses while keeping a separation of concerns for those running them. It is simply better than SMS and is dead simple. You can have a business app that makes this be a separate thing from your personal life while using the same phone. I have seen it used as a way to contact restaurants or local stores, order stuff, but that was the extent of it. Just communication, nothing else. For me, at least, it has only been the messaging app I'm willing to use to be in touch with non-techie friends.

dheera 2y ago

For one, in other countries, people are perfectly okay with doing real business over a messaging app. I saw a doctor in Indonesia once and everything from appointment scheduling to follow up with the doctor was done on WhatsApp. They were okay sending medical tests, records, and bills on WhatsApp as well. In China, same thing, on WeChat. In the US, they want you to register some stupid MyHealth thing, sign some paper documents, and mail follow up shit to your residential address. They won't give you medical records on anything other than a fucking CD-ROM, even in 2024. Somehow in the US, a messaging app isn't "official" enough, and there's going to be the one first amendment brat* that doesn't want to install WhatsApp for privacy reasons. * I say this jokingly, and do think we need to be harsher on corporations. However, my point is that in collectivist countries like Indonesia/China, if you don't install WhatsApp/WeChat or whatever is the chosen national app, you'll be the outcast and nobody will help you. The collectivist societies tend to embrace these apps for their convenience, rather than question their terms and conditions.

tuna74 2y ago
"In the US, they want you to register some stupid MyHealth thing, sign some paper documents, and mail follow up shit to your residential address. They won't give you medical records on anything other than a fucking CD-ROM, even in 2024. Somehow in the US, a messaging app isn't "official" enough, and there's going to be the one first amendment brat* that doesn't want to install WhatsApp for privacy reasons." That is because you don't have any good online ID authenticator. Something like BankId in Sweden is so incredibly practical in a lot of ways.
- dheera 2y ago
  bankid.com: "To get a BankID, you must have a Swedish personal identity number" What do non-citizens use in Sweden to get around? The "everything apps" of places that have them aren't usually restricted to only citizens (though some admittedly have shitty UIs for non-citizens)
  - wasmitnetzen 2y ago
    Everyone who's a permanent resident in Sweden gets a personal identity number, it's not tied to your citizenship. That would be illegal anyway, at least for citizens of other EU countries. There's a lower-level, different number, which is less powerful, but easier to get.

NoLinkToMe 2y ago

It’s the first time I hear that Whatsapp is already an everything app. Ive used Whatsapp for about 14 years or so on a daily basis as my main app. But it’s just chat for me, and about 30% of my non-professional calls. And I use the share location feature a lot when meeting friends. But that’s about it. But banking, social media, ID/login, maps, albums, browsing etc I all do outside of whatsapp.

viraptor 2y ago
Yup, that claim went a bit far. I mean, the company account API exists and you can do buttons and automation and lots of companies do support this way. (All my contact with Dell support was over WhatsApp) So the tech is there, but the actual deployment of it isn't that big.
- inemesitaffia 2y ago
  Depends on your country. A particular banking service option I use is only available on WhatsApp
insane_dreamer 2y ago
Here's where the comparison with WeChat maybe breaks down. I lived in China for years, right during the time that WeChat (WeiXin) came out and evolved to become the "everything" app (vanquishing Weibo and others). But I've only used WhatsApp for text messages and didn't even know that it had all these other features until I read this article. So maybe it isn't really comparable to WeChat in that sense -- or maybe it is, I don't really know actually.

richardw 2y ago

Honestly, it was just what it enabled. U.S. had cheap/free texting, so the network effect of just staying where you are was huge. Outside the US, there was only expensive texting so there was a latent need. A friend asked me to use it first. She's not a techie, but she wasn't earning much and my first instinct was a mild annoyance that she was being cheap and trying to get me to use this other weird thing. What I had "worked" and had everyone on it. But ok, I'll try it. Became an early-ish adopter, spoke with her and a few people, over time it grew and utterly replaced texts. For friends, work, groups. If you try texting there, you're a dinosaur. We had no sense of social stigma of blue/green ticks. Everyone had the same ticks. Moved to Australia and now I have to check. It's mostly WhatsApp but still some texts, and I have to check if someone is on WhatsApp rather than assume. Once or twice I've had to send on both channels. But there are WhatsApp groups everywhere, so no idea why this texting thing is still alive. Notice and compare your own instincts when you read this. You might have the opposite reaction depending on where you are. And for startups, it's whether you can land and enable a benefit before the existing company builds it. Speed vs distribution. Texting was so big a source of revenue that the local network providers kept the price high and basically lost it all. They could have dropped the price to where network effects prevented movement. The comfort of having the buttons and features and network where you expect them is massive.

wenc 2y ago

This is why travel is so important -- it gets us out of our bubbles. Once I was brainstorming with a German colleague about a new business chat feature, and he said we should target WhatsApp as a channel. My American colleagues were like, "No one uses that these days." But Americans have little idea how popular WhatsApp really is in Europe, and Brazil (where it's colloquially called Zappy Zappy), and vast swaths of the world. The American experience isn't as normative as we assume. I only know this because I'm part of a diaspora network and I have contacts from all over the world -- FB Messenger and iMessage are not as popular as we think outside of certain high GDP countries. Conversely, some suggested targeting iOS in Germany, but my German colleague immediately said that iOS marketshare in Germany is actually fairly low. That surprised me but he was right. https://www.statista.com/statistics/461900/android-vs-ios-market-share-in-smartphone-sales-germany/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/461900/android-vs-ios-ma... Even France, with its reputation for liking premium products, does not have a high iOS market share. Japan does have a very high iOS market share however because they appreciate craftsmanship, and due to Softbank's efforts in the country. I remember the early days of WhatsApp -- it was the non-SMS messaging platform of choice in an era when phone plans changed for texting.

spookie 2y ago
Apple devices cost more in Europe, a jump high enough that you might as well consider the competition. I'm taking VAT into account. That and, well... Google has been more supportive of EU countries than Apple. Apple maps was useless in the EU for a long time. Plus horrendous support across the EU. If you are in a big city, yeah you will find an Apple Store, otherwise tough luck. It has nothing to do with craftmanship.
- vladvasiliu 2y ago
  I think the only point that stands is the price. Apple products are indeed more expensive in France than in the US. However, Google Maps runs fine on iOS and you can purchase Apple products from other retailers and they will also handle warranty claims. None of my Apple products were bought from an Apple Store.

narrator 2y ago

Being the rare American Android person, I use it, Signal and Telegram to communicate with Iphone people since IMessage SMS integration is badly crippled.

madeofpalk 2y ago

> The description of WhatsApp here is exactly what Elon wanted X to become I don't know what an "everything app" is, but that's not my experience with WhatsApp in Europe. It's just how you text or call everyone or businesses, but there's no payments or anything else going on beyond perhaps the occasional business chatbot. But even then, most 'businesses' I interact with over WhatsApp is just some person with a phone.

insane_dreamer 2y ago
I think Elon's target was WeChat, and the article implied that WhatsApp had essentially the same functionality as WeChat, but that may not actually be the case, or maybe only in some countries like Brazil.

1123581321 2y ago

When Facebook bought WhatsApp, either Facebook or WhatsApp was the top social network in just about every country. It was a critical purchase for Facebook that locked out competitors globally for years. I can’t find the map now; if anyone knows what I’m talking about I hope they can share it. Free or cheap texting hamstrung WhatsApp’s growth in some countries like the US. It was better in countries where cell plans were expensive because data didn’t meter per communication like SMS and WhatsApp was efficient. WhatsApp isn’t an everything app like WeChat.