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Other how popular is iMessage in your home country?
- Thread starter HALE101
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The cost of SMS and MMS had a lot to do with it at one point, but now I mostly think it has to do with the cost of handsets and the barrier to entry. Iphones in Europe are a lot more expensive than android phones, salaries are lower in the EU and Europeans don’t have as much access to credit as Americans. Also, carriers do not provide as many incentives for iPhones as they do in the US, so there always seems to be some money to pay upfront if you want an iPhone. So cheaper android phones have definitely flooded the market. Therefore WhatsApp has become the Lingua franca between OSes since Android‘s baked in messaging solutions are crap. I still see people here in Europe using iPhone 6 and 7s. Also, if iPhone‘s market share does increase here, getting people to switch messaging platforms will be impossible.
My wife’s family lives in Colombia and they all use WhatsApp.
Meanwhile here in Las Vegas, majority of my friends and family use iPhone and use iMessage. Only a handful of ppl I know from work and inner circle use android (we are all in our late 30s and 40s).
Meanwhile here in Las Vegas, majority of my friends and family use iPhone and use iMessage. Only a handful of ppl I know from work and inner circle use android (we are all in our late 30s and 40s).
Yes, from what I've seen, most plans offered by European providers are all unlimited talk and text.
edit: misunderstood your question! Sorry!
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Most plans in the UK and I would imagine the rest of Europe are unlimited texts and calls. Data is really cheap and I think we pay a lot less for our tariffs than people would in the US. However the hardware in regards to iPhones is more expensive here. We tend to pay in Pound Sterling what it costs in USD for our handsets and for some reason the carriers make you pay an upfront fee with iPhones as they never seem to come 'free' with the total handset cost absorbed within the contract. There was a carrier subsidy when the iPhone first came out but this has been gone for over a decade to my knowledge.
Another reason I think WhatsApp is popular here is because it can cost £0.30p to send a picture/video message via SMS/MMS to someone who is not on the same platform as yourself. This is not included in the standard unlimited plans. This is where WhatsApp is popular as group messaging is easy and free between those using iPhones and Android devices. The interface is also a bit more aesthetically pleasing (personal preference) to many. There is a good mix of people on both platforms here with Android possibly being the most popular, so it is inevitable that you will know somebody with an Android device in your close group of family/friends. iMessage is not cross platform for multimedia content so will never dominate here IMO. I use it daily like a lot of people for those of us that know others with iPhones though.
About 1 out of 100 use it. Great way to filter out whom to prioritize to talk to
You prioritize whom to talk to based on their choice of messaging app?
Unless the people you don’t want to communicate with are the iPhone users lol.
So suitable dates are determined by the phone they use? That’s hilarious and not convinced you are being serious lol.
Despite the popularity of the iPhone here in the UK, most people use WhatsApp. I personally use a mixture. WhatsApp with groups of friend, iMessage to individuals with iPhones (like my wife) and Facebook messenger to other friends who aren’t on WhatsApp or don’t have iPhone.
I don't know anyone that doesn't use iMessage or standard text messages on their phone in Scotland and with my friends across Europe. I haven't yet met a person that uses WhatsApp. Discord and Slack are very popular for chatting to people when I am not phoning or texting them.
I would say is not that hard to know the reason. 55-65 iPhone market share in the US and many young people that prefers iPhones. In Europe even that we see a lot of people with iphones it's way MORE mixed. Lot of Samsungs or chinese brands which aren't sold or fully available in the US like Xiaomi. Could be the fact US it's still a single market for telcos while in Europe even with free roaming still each country has their own telcos/brands/agreements with every phone they sell.
I'm originally from Argentina where everyone uses Whatsapp (obviously there are iphonens but not like the US) and in the UK I don't see any difference. My partner uses FB messenger while I stick with Whatsapp however I already forced many of my friends to use Signal or some family members to Imessage with no luck lol
I'm originally from Argentina where everyone uses Whatsapp (obviously there are iphonens but not like the US) and in the UK I don't see any difference. My partner uses FB messenger while I stick with Whatsapp however I already forced many of my friends to use Signal or some family members to Imessage with no luck lol
Might be a sad thing, but, I am now only using iMessage and SMS! Tried Signal yesterday, and none of my Contacts use it - LOL. I think I am simply way past the point of 'convincing' anyone to use a particular messaging system.
After all, if someone said to me to use a particular messaging service, that I was not already using, I would be a little perturbed. To add, if someone really needs to get hold of me, they have choices, iMessage, SMS, phone me, email me, or visit my house
After all, if someone said to me to use a particular messaging service, that I was not already using, I would be a little perturbed. To add, if someone really needs to get hold of me, they have choices, iMessage, SMS, phone me, email me, or visit my house
If you haven’t met anybody in this country or in other parts of Europe that use WhatsApp, then I would say that is very unusual. It’s a messaging platform that is massively dominant here and one that I find many of my new contacts use in both business and pleasure environments. Not doubting you, just very surprised indeed.
Usual or unusual depends on your job and social circle. I know and interact mostly with other developers and photographers so you have a rather tech savvy bunch that don't 'get' WhatsApp. I didn't know it existed until I started seeing it pop up in this forum over the last two years. For developers we mostly interact on Discord and that's also how I interact with friends. Family and everyone else is on iMessage ether as a IP text or text. As far as most are concerned iMessage is just a progressive enhancement of text messages until text over ip unifies it.
Tech savvy; didn’t know WhatsApp existed until two years ago. Mmmkay.
Tech savvy people who don’t get WhatsApp and hadn’t heard about it until it was read about on this forum in the last 2 years? I don’t believe that, sorry. WhatsApp has been a dominant messaging platform for more than a decade now and I was using it when I had Android devices more than 10 years ago too. I agree the mediums for communication may be influenced by profession and social circles, but there are 31 million registered WhatsApp users in the United Kingdom alone and I find it difficult to believe you haven’t stumbled across one in the last 13 years.
Not a lot of Android users in my circles. I left Facebook more than a decade ago... amazingly I also don't know what new products myspace have been working on. I moved on and eventually people still using WhatsApp will move on to the next messaging client like they did with MSM, AOL, Yahoo messenger and Skype.