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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 messag

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.
  - Zak 2y ago
    Hangouts was the default SMS client in Android for a while, and it worked well enough as an SMS client that I never heard anybody complain about it. Much like iMessage, it could upgrade to internet-based messaging if both people in a conversation used it. Where Google went wrong was bowing to pressure from carriers to stop doing that. Carriers had been much more powerful in the past, and I think Google failed to recognize just how fast their influence was waning.
    - hocuspocus 2y ago
      I don't buy it. Google just followed iMessage, only two years later, I don't see why carriers would suddenly have an issue with that. Plus Hangouts has never been a mainstream mobile messaging app, and I was a big user at the time. I worked at Samsung then and I'd bet most Android users never launched Hangouts nor even noticed it was preinstalled. Google killed the integration in 2017 when they started betting on RCS and Google Messages more seriously.
      - ethbr1 2y ago
        At the time, Google was in a much weaker position to push against carrier demands, because it didn't have as firm control over Android OEMs. So it was trying to juggle carrier + OEMs + Android and keep everyone happy. Anything that upset one party wasn't going to happen. Only in more recent, Samsung/Pixel-centric times has Google had iPhone-like negotiating weight (and will).
jorvi 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 still remember the "Ping!" app (not Blackberry Ping). Because early iOS was very lackluster with no notification support, every message was a pop-up. And "Ping!" itself had no message history. WhatsApp followed pretty closely after. Even earlier, people used MSN via eBuddy. Not everyone had a smartphone yet, but at least the whole world was on MSN, so as long as the person without a smartphone was at a PC, you could converse. Someone had to text you "hey, get on eBuddy/MSN" though. Apps could either be foregrounded or dead in the background. There was no background processing aside from privileged apps like Mail or Music. And there was no notification service that could act like an IRC bouncer and wake up your backgrounded application. Medieval times. Also, back then almost no one was using data, it was texting / calling that was still the major cash cow of providers, so you often got unlimited data for very cheap. Funnily enough that "unlimited data for cheap" later led to a pretty big scuffle between providers and clever people who rolled over their contract indefinitely. Legally providers had to keep providing them with unlimited internet. The trick they did to push customers to renew their subscription was only providing them with 2G or 3G data (depending on their contract) and also limiting their speeds to the lowest tier. One provider even went as far as squeezing them on band access.

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.
- Zak 2y ago
  Hangouts was the default SMS client in Android for a while, and it worked well enough as an SMS client that I never heard anybody complain about it. Much like iMessage, it could upgrade to internet-based messaging if both people in a conversation used it. Where Google went wrong was bowing to pressure from carriers to stop doing that. Carriers had been much more powerful in the past, and I think Google failed to recognize just how fast their influence was waning.
  - hocuspocus 2y ago
    I don't buy it. Google just followed iMessage, only two years later, I don't see why carriers would suddenly have an issue with that. Plus Hangouts has never been a mainstream mobile messaging app, and I was a big user at the time. I worked at Samsung then and I'd bet most Android users never launched Hangouts nor even noticed it was preinstalled. Google killed the integration in 2017 when they started betting on RCS and Google Messages more seriously.
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      At the time, Google was in a much weaker position to push against carrier demands, because it didn't have as firm control over Android OEMs. So it was trying to juggle carrier + OEMs + Android and keep everyone happy. Anything that upset one party wasn't going to happen. Only in more recent, Samsung/Pixel-centric times has Google had iPhone-like negotiating weight (and will).

jorvi 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 still remember the "Ping!" app (not Blackberry Ping). Because early iOS was very lackluster with no notification support, every message was a pop-up. And "Ping!" itself had no message history. WhatsApp followed pretty closely after. Even earlier, people used MSN via eBuddy. Not everyone had a smartphone yet, but at least the whole world was on MSN, so as long as the person without a smartphone was at a PC, you could converse. Someone had to text you "hey, get on eBuddy/MSN" though. Apps could either be foregrounded or dead in the background. There was no background processing aside from privileged apps like Mail or Music. And there was no notification service that could act like an IRC bouncer and wake up your backgrounded application. Medieval times. Also, back then almost no one was using data, it was texting / calling that was still the major cash cow of providers, so you often got unlimited data for very cheap. Funnily enough that "unlimited data for cheap" later led to a pretty big scuffle between providers and clever people who rolled over their contract indefinitely. Legally providers had to keep providing them with unlimited internet. The trick they did to push customers to renew their subscription was only providing them with 2G or 3G data (depending on their contract) and also limiting their speeds to the lowest tier. One provider even went as far as squeezing them on band access.