Apple’s iMessage is winning because of the dreaded green text bubble

With just the with their mere presence, not to mention their handicapped lack of features, green bubbles from those who settle for pretend iPhones ruin group texts for everyone else who uses the real thing.

Apple’s iMessage service is one of the world’s most widely used social networks and helped to cement the iPhone’s dominance among young smartphone users in the U.S., almost all of whom use Apple’s Messages app to communicate.
Tim Higgins for The Wall Street Journal:

As part of the [Epic Games v. Apple] battle, thousands of pages of internal records were made public. Some revealed a long-running debate about whether to offer iMessage on phones that run with Google’s Android operating system. Apple made a critical decision: Keep iMessage for Apple users only.
From the beginning, Apple got creative in its protection of iMessage’s exclusivity. It didn’t ban the exchange of traditional text messages with Android users but instead branded those messages with a different color; when an Android user is part of a group chat, the iPhone users see green bubbles rather than blue. It also withheld certain features. There is no dot-dot-dot icon to demonstrate that a non-iPhone user is typing, for example, and an iMessage heart or thumbs-up annotation [Tapback] has long conveyed to Android users as text instead of images.
The cultivation of iMessage is consistent with Apple’s broader strategy to tie its hardware, software and services together in a self-reinforcing world—dubbed the walled garden—that encourages people to pay the premium for its relatively expensive gadgets and remain loyal to its brand.

MacDailyNews Take: You want real Messages? Get a real iPhone. Apple’s iPhone SE starts at $399 which is simply not “relatively expensive” vs. the cost of settling for a pretend iPhone and its handicapped green bubbles.

“With iMessage we built a great service that our users love and that is different from those offered by other platforms,” [Apple] said in a statement.
“These teenagers will continue to become consumers in the future and hopefully continue to buy phones into their 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s,” said Harsh Kumar, an analyst for Piper Sandler. The firm recently found that 87% of teens surveyed last year own iPhones.
Apple’s iMessage plays a significant role in the lives of young smartphone users and their parents, according to data and interviews with a dozen of these people. Teens and college students said they dread the ostracism that comes with a green text. The social pressure is palpable, with some reporting being ostracized or singled out after switching away from iPhones.
“In my circle at college, and in high school rolling over into college, most people have iPhones and utilize a lot of those kinds of iPhone specific features” together, said Ms. Lowitz, the Michigan student… Jocelyn Maher, a 24-year-old master’s student in upstate New York, said her friends and younger sister have mocked her for exchanging texts with potential paramours using Android phones. “I was like, `Oh my gosh, his texts are green,’ and my sister literally went, `Ew that’s gross,’” Ms. Maher said.

MacDailyNews Take: Yes, it is gross.
From a U.S. teen we just briefly interviewed: “There was this one kid in music theory who had an Android and I was like (makes face, rolls eyes). Because it’s a type; it’s a red flag.” – MacDailyNews, July 2, 2019

As for Ms. Lowitz, the Michigan college student, she was glad when her switch to Android—brought about by her participation in a paid research study—came to an end. She was ready to get back to her iPhone. “There’s too much within the Apple network for me to switch,” she said.
Anna Fuder, 19, a friend at Michigan who had declined to participate in the study for fear of giving up her iPhone, was overjoyed. “As soon as she switched back to her iPhone, it was like hallelujah,” Ms. Fuder said. “Blue again.”

MacDailyNews Take: It’s simple, really: Get a real iPhone.
We don’t have a ton, thankfully, but we do have a few poor souls who text us with their ugly, dysfunctional green bubbles and it’s a awful experience. They can’t do much of anything. They can’t execute or experience any of the cool stuff we Messages users can. It’s just plain sad.
Our Message for them is always the same: “Get a real iPhone!”
Several of them have and they’ve thanked us profusely for the advice. — MacDailyNews, October 19, 2018
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