> You also seem to be forgetting the most-populous country in the world – no WhatsApp there either.
However in the 4th largest (Indonesia) everybody uses WhatsApp (at least a few years back) as Facebook offered free data to their services there (internet.org / "Free Basics") whereas iMessage would cost money for data traffic or SMS/MMS.
Thus really different across countries and regions and social circles.
Same for the 5th, Brazil. Everyone uses WhatsApp here and has been more than a decade since the last time I've ever had to use sms (never even used mms).
> I really don’t think Apple consider iMessage exclusivity that important.
Then you missed the part where Apple executives explicitly said so in writing:
> "the #1 most difficult [reason] to leave the Apple universe app is iMessage . . . iMessage amounts to serious lock-in." Schiller stated that "moving iMessage to Android will hurt us more than help us, this email illustrates why."
If Schiller had to make those points in what sounds like an internal debate, and the plan of record at some point was iMessage on Android, then it follows that Apple didn’t see it as that important.
But very few of the people on Earth live where you live, either. What’s the point?
People I know in India tend to use WhatsApp. People I know in Europe tend to use whatever shit is popular where they live. Discord, Telegram, FB Messenger, iMessage for those with iPhones, SMSes as a default, you name it. Again, what’s the point?
> WhatsApp is by far the most popular option overall and in Europe too. Facebook Messenger and WeChat are also popular.
And Discord, and Telegram. Aggregate averages are not useful because they mask a lot of very different situations. Even at the country level, just look at this map for example: https://www.similarweb.com/blog/research/market-research/wor... . And even this map obscures a lot: it does not show social effects, and it only shows the most dominant platform without telling how popular the others are. In these discussions you see a lot of people parroting anecdotes as if they were statistically significant. This is really unhelpful.
> iMessage is only used in the US.
This is factually false, for example. Loads of people use it in Europe as well, even though it might not be the case in your social circles. It is not dominant anywhere, but that includes the US. Looking here for example: https://engage.sinch.com/blog/most-popular-messaging-apps-in... iMessage usage varies from ~10% to ~35% depending on countries (with a lot of countries missing). That’s quite a few million people using it at the very least.
Again, asserting anecdotes that way is really unhelpful.
