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Other how popular is iMessage in your home country?

Here in Montreal, in my friends bubble, everyone uses messenger from Facebook. We use iMessage really occasionally… I wonder if it’s because most people have Android phones or just use it because that always had since the launch of Facebook 🤔
No WhatsApp here 😅😅😅
 
In NZ it seems that everyone uses WhatsApp. Last time I sent an iMessage was couple of months ago to my property manager who is not part of my WhatsApp network
 
Applefan4 said:
In NZ it seems that everyone uses WhatsApp. Last time I sent an iMessage was couple of months ago to my property manager who is not part of my WhatsApp network
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Funny you should say that; I'm in NZ and don't know a single person that uses WhatsApp. Most of us are on iMessage, falling back to SMS for the Android users.

It probably helps that most of my friends have iPhones though!
 
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Nermal said:
Funny you should say that; I'm in NZ and don't know a single person that uses WhatsApp. Most of us are on iMessage, falling back to SMS for the Android users.

It probably helps that most of my friends have iPhones though!
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Seems to me that's exactly the case here in Australia.

iPhone is heavily ingrained in the population, along with Samsung, not a real lot of penetration elsewhere.

As someone mentioned in this thread, perhaps cheaper Android units availability in Europe changes the marketplace.
I would guess, around 90% of my msg communication is through iMessage, sms for Android.
 
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Actually the more I think about it in the US, for the most part we don’t say we use this or that messaging platform. For those of us that have iPhones we just use the baked in messaging app and that happens to be iMessage. Even if we message those with Androids we don’t really think about the messaging platform. We just text and message.
 
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In France, it's WhatsApp : used by many user Android + iOS
Main pb of iMessage is Android... So for group message WhatsApp won

I'm using iMessage sometimes like sms 😛
But for group messages at work, it's always WhatsApp (not good for security). So still have to use it...

Some people are now using Signal instead of WhatsApp, but too few...
 
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Also, it comes down to your service provider, do you get unlimited sms or do you pay after a quota is reached, that would make a big difference to people using Messenger or Whats App, because of pricing.

In Aus, I don't think there is a single provider that charges for sms, I'm not sure about the rest of the world, just a thought.
 
hammie14 said:
I don’t get that, why have a iPhone and not use iMessage!
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It's easy. Even if most of your friends use iOS, that means some don't. And some may switch to Android. Nobody like having to use multiple messenger apps. People want everything in one place. That makes iMessages really unattractive since Apple doesn't offer an Android app.

In Europe, it's 30% iOS, 69% Android, 1% other. iMessages doesn't even reach a third of all users.
In the US, it's 42% iOS, 58% Android. Not surprising iMessages is more attractive here.

People in Europe mainly use WhatsApp basically because they were first to the party and people don't care enough about privacy. There are better apps now (Signal, Telegram) and some people and their friends groups are slowly switching over but WhatsApp is still by far the biggest one and it will probably stay that way in the forseeable future.
 
imdropbear said:
It's easy. Even if most of your friends use iOS, that means some don't. And some may switch to Android. Nobody like having to use multiple messenger apps. People want everything in one place. That makes iMessages really unattractive since Apple doesn't offer an Android app.

In Europe, it's 30% iOS, 69% Android, 1% other. iMessages doesn't even reach a third of all users.
In the US, it's 42% iOS, 58% Android. Not surprising iMessages is more attractive here.

People in Europe mainly use WhatsApp basically because they were first to the party and people don't care enough about privacy. There are better apps now (Signal, Telegram) and some people and their friends groups are slowly switching over but WhatsApp is still by far the biggest one and it will probably stay that way in the forseeable future.
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As a very old person this kind of reminds me of when VHS and Betamax home video recording came out In the 1980’s. Betamax was by far the best system but never caught on (for lots of reasons) and VHS trounced it.
 
As already mentioned, here in the Netherlands it is nearly all WhatsApp, but some official sources do use iMessage - like my provider T-Mobile, and American Express, delivery services like PostNL and DPD, and some (local) government messages. But I use WhatsApp exclusively to talk to my three daughters in the UK (all on iPhones) and we have also noticed that video chats seem to be better with WhatsApp than Facetime. Same with friends in Germany, Switzerland, France and Belgium.
 
Is there any data that supports that iMessage is "non existent in Europe"? Most of my friends use iPhone and we all use iMessage. SMS works fine for cross platform messaging.
 
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Germany
I try to force my friends and family to answer on iMessage but 99 % are using WhatsApp. My mum actually texts me on iMessage but sends me images via WhatsApp, because she always confuses them (both icons are green).

I actually think it is kind of going back to the days of people using ICQ. WhatsApp basically took its place sooner than iMessage and has more similar features. There were more Android users in the beginning, so iPhone users were forced to connect with them via WhatsApp and stuck with it. iMessage is also still VERY restricted, starting with the lack of wallpapers
 
In my country no one uses iMessage (or any other IM platforms). Whatsapp has complete monopoly.
 
In Hong Kong almost everyone uses WhatsApp. I use iMessage with a couple of other expat friends, but for locals it's 99% WhatsApp and very occasionally Signal or Telegram.
 
Here in Brazil, WhatsApp is used by the huge and overwhelming majority of iPhone users, even users among iPhone's use WhatsApp. They don't even know much about iMessage. They think it's a simple SMS exchanger. My wife and I only use iMessage among us.
 
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Having lived in both Europe and the United States since 2007 I believe there is one main reason why iMessage seems to be so much more popular in the United States versus Europe.

European carriers milked the SMS and most importantly MMS train much longer than US carriers. Heck, even today most phone plans in most European countries don't include free MMS and some carriers charge upwards of 15 ct per message. This means that while you can send regular one-on-one text messages for free group messaging will require everyone to enable MMS, which is a no-go for most people. In comparison MMS became part of the "free texting" plans in the United States long before Apple introduced the iPhone back in 2007. Hence when Apple first introduced iMessage a couple of years later people already had their established groups and habits and simply continued using their messages application and in many cases without even realizing it switched over from SMS and MMS-based communication to iMessage.

Fact of the matter is that most people here in the US simply don't care what service they are using. They are "texting" by using their normal messages application. I dare to say that most regular users outside the tech bubble don't even know the difference between blue and green texts and don't care as long as their text messages reach their destination. Not one of my American friends uses anything but their regular messages application for texting regardless of whether they are on Android or iOS. In comparison, every single on of my European friends, regardless of what country they live in, uses WhatsApp.
 
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I would love to bin off WhatsApp, just like I have with every other Facebook product, but sadly it's just not feasible in the UK. No one uses iMessage, even though I'd say at least 75% of my friends and family, if not more, use iPhone.

It feels genuinely strange to go into Messages.app on my phone. All the threads in there are delivery notifications or two-step verification messages.
 
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hammie14 said:
This is my setup, I mainly use iMessage and for android friends i use signal, if they don’t want to use signal then or iMessage then I don’t contact them! Easy

I used to use WhatsApp until Facebook bought them.



I don’t get that, why have a iPhone and not use iMessage!
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Well because SMS is not popular (and expensive), in people’s mind messages = plain old SMS. If you were to use iMessage you have to guess what device your recipient have, or use iMessage for some known contacts and WhatsApp for the rest. People just prefer to use the one that works for everything and be fine with it.
 
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It will be hard for anyone to say with any certainty what is more popular in each country, just what they use more. I've seen people saying Whatsapp is more popular in the UK yet i'm in the UK and barely use it, think i have a one big group chat on it for my cricket club and thats it. This is because the majority of my family and friends are all iPhone users and even those that arent if its not a group chat then its just normal SMS. For a while now in the UK the vast majority of contracts have included unlimited texts, MMS is different i'll admit with many still charging, but in terms of simple texts very few are charging for them unless you are going over limits that are very high to start with.
 
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