It’s no secret that Apple favors a walled garden approach with its devices and services. And nowhere is that more evident than with iMessage. The only way to see those precious blue bubbles is on an Apple device.
According to court docs from Apple’s App Store battle with Epic Games, Apple execs are well-aware that iMessage helps keep customers tethered to its ecosystem.
Epic Games argues that Apple purposefully locks customers into its ecosystem of devices and services, and its lawyers this week served up some Apple emails to prove its point. As The Verge reports, one of the key exchanges is from an unnamed, former Apple employee, who states: “The #1 most difficult [reason] to leave the Apple universe app is iMessage … iMessage amounts to serious lock-in.”
Apple Fellow Phil Schiller responds that “moving iMessage to Android will hurt us more than help us, this email illustrates why.” SVP of Software Engineering Craig Federighi also weighs in by explaining, “iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove [an] obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones.”
Epic says these exchanges prove that Apple wants to “monopolize two markets within its iOS ecosystem”—iOS app distribution and iOS in-app payments. As well as iMessage, the filing mentions FaceTime, which was meant to be an open industry standard, Steve Jobs said in 2010, but ultimately remains a service restricted to Apple devices.
Once upon a time, BlackBerry Messenger was a major selling point for BlackBerry. Like iMessage today, BBMs sent between BlackBerry users did not count against monthly text allotments. And while BlackBerry was already floundering when it launched BBM for iOS and Android in 2013 (thanks in large part to competition from iOS), Apple appears to recognize the benefits of keeping its most popular services within its own ecosystem. (BBM shut down in 2019.)
