As has been mentioned many times in the other comments, those force you to download something, perhaps make an account, make sure everyone has it…whereas 90% of the people might already have an iPhone, which might be better than the number for anything else.
I'd argue that that is irrelevant. What's the point in having anything other than a flip phone if you refuse to download apps. It's not a barrier to entry in every other case and it's never been a barrier to entry with my friends.
Why would you download an app for the basic functionality of a phone? Texting is an integral part of phones and I haven't met a person in the US without unlimited texting in years.
I know a lot of friends who use WeChat to avoid things like international texting rates, but Americans talking to Americans generally do not need this.
Thank you for making my point. iMessage is not texting. I'm responding to this.
"Why would you download an app for the basic functionality of a phone? Texting is an integral part of phones and I haven't met a person in the US without unlimited texting in years."
I don't actually think this is true. Is there any verification that most iOS users do not have a single one of the most popular messaging apps in the world?
I never said they don't have anything but if you ask someone to download an app specifically to contact you they're going to be very bothered by it. It's like how as streaming services proliferate there are only so many services people actually want to subscribe to, or how pre-unlimited calling people were very judicious about calling people not on their network.
Anecdotally, in my social group:
- Snap: withering on the vine.
- Messenger: generally declining with the declining popularity of Facebook in my age cohort
- Instagram: everyone has it, but messaging is definitely a second class part of the app and no one really uses it other than to send instagram memes
- GroupMe: I downloaded it once for one person, most of the people in the chat have iPhones anyways, and people don't really use it other than to contact the non-Apple users specifically.
Well, here's an anecdote for you. I am a US iPhone user and I use zero third party messaging apps. I know of no one in my friend circle who has an iPhone and uses a third party messaging app.
The whole point is to be about your social circle. If 90% of my social circle is on iPhone, they're on iMessage.
What the rest of the world outside of my social circle does isn't really relevant to my conversations inside my social circle.
I've run up against this reality multiple times. I personally prefer signal & whatsapp for group chats than iMessage. If only because I can mute them and not get an annoying red bubble telling me about the hundreds of messages I'm trying to not react to in real time when I'm busy.
That doesn't stop the red counter bubble from appearing and incrementing on the messages app, sadly.
Whereas a muted group chat in whatsapp is completely muted, unless someone explicitly @tags you in a message or explicitly replies to your message (another feature iMessage group chats lacks - tagging specific people, and explicit/contextual replies to specific messages)
