Comment by smt88
12 hours ago
Consumers don't necessarily want iPhone. They don't want to be excluded from iMessage, which is a completely different motivation.
12 hours ago
Consumers don't necessarily want iPhone. They don't want to be excluded from iMessage, which is a completely different motivation.
Yeah, that just doesn't pass the simplest sniff tests. I barely use iMessage, and yet I'm an iPhone user. Basically everyone around me is the same.
Agreed, I’ve been a loyal iPhone user for a long time, and very few people I know use iMessage. I use it with my parents because they don’t have any other messenger, and they don’t even really know it’s iMessage, they just think of it as texting. Everyone I know is using something else for messages, whether it’s Discord, Instagram DMs, WhatsApp, or occasionally Telegram or Snapchat.
In the US it's mostly iMessage, and that includes people who say it's not mostly iMessage.
iPhones are more expensive, on average, for a similar or worse experience. The thing that drives iphone sales is social. People want iPhones because their friends do, and that's a very good reason.
> Yeah, that just doesn't pass the simplest sniff tests. I barely use iMessage, and yet I'm an iPhone user.
A single anecdote isn't data. You're not a typical consumer.
The only major market where iPhone outsells Android (number of handsets) is the US, and it's because of iMessage. Android is 70% of the world market and dominates LatAm, Africa, and Asia.
Why are you comparing a single phone manufacturers market position to the market position of an entire OS?
iOS vs Android isn’t relevant when discussing hardware. It’s Apple vs Samsung etc. iOS doesn’t need majority market ownership for Apple to completely dominate their hardware competitors in a market.
US centric view, which I believe to be wrong. UK is predominantly WhatsApp, and the bulk of handsets sold are still iPhones.
Income is a much tighter correlation than messaging platform. Rack up those market shares by phone value and the scales tip even harder.
> the bulk of handsets sold are still iPhones
According to https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-kin... it's closer to 50/50.
That must be an american thing because I guarantee you that it doesn't mean anything for the rest of the world.
It is, and the iPhone doesn't have overwhelming market share in any other large market, which is my point.
But they’re still the largest individual player in just about every market they’re in. So there’s clearly a strong demand for iPhones.
That is a very US centric opinion.
In other part of the globe iphone users are mostly using whatsapp or Line and couldn't care less about imessage.
And in those countries, iOS has a much smaller market share. You're proving my point.
The sum of all these smaller markets is still bigger than the US one.
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I doubt 80% of iphone users would be able to tell you if imessage was on or not.
they might say that some people's messages are green, but not much more.
iMessage is AFAIK only really a big thing in the US.
Canada too.
I only have WhatsApp installed for when I leave the country.
It depends on your social circle obviously. I had a single person I used iMessage with no but we since switched to SMS. Not many people where I live have iphones.
Yes, and the US is by far Apple's most important handset market. The other iOS-majority countries are small markets for Apple.
I totally buy this as someone located in the US, but what is everybody else using? It can’t be WhatsApp? Is everyone sending all their connection graphdata to Meta?
A lot of SMBs use Instagram to connect to their clients, so Instagram build-in messenger is a default option for a lot of people (especially women) in many parts of the world.
Some places have regional messengers that are very entrenched, like Line in Japan or KakaoTalk in Korea.
WhatsApp is a default option in a large number of countries including most of Middle East, parts of Europe, Brazil, most of Africa, Southern Asia. To me it is surprising, too, because out of all messaging options WhatsApp seems like the least developed and least ergonomic.
And yes, this does mean that most people share whatever data Big Tech wants. They use Meta to talk to each other, auto-upload their photos to Google, click "accept" to every cookie banner so that thousands of no-name companies around the world know where they are and what they are doing at all times.
People who care about privacy (very very few) use signal, everyone else uses Whatsup
You understand that Facebook and Instagram are also very popular yes?
It’s WhatsApp. No one thinks about sending data to Meta. The world is much bigger than the HN bubble, where almost no one thinks about privacy implications.
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in my country it's Whatsapp, and has been since before it was acquired by Meta
Everyone in the UK and Western Europe uses WhatsApp as their primary messenger.
The only time I ever open iMessage is when I get an SMS 2FA verification code or something similar.
Also, in the Middle East everyone also just uses WhatsApp or Telegram.
No one uses iMessage in my country. Yet iPhones are sought after. Some of us just really like iPhones for the experience - not everything is a conspiracy. People can have different tastes and are more free to choose than people on HN like to believe.
What country?