Apple’s Use of iMessage Network Effects to Keep iPhone Users From Switching to Android
This article is about how Apple uses iMessage to keep consumers from switching away from their platform and moving to Android. iMessage is a service Apple provides that allows users to exchange messages, and Apple only makes it available on iPhones. This article talks about how the author uses iMessage, and how it is the primary factor that prevents him from switching to Android.
Apple is very intentionally not offering iMessage on Android phones. By doing this they are creating a situation where there is the type of direct benefit discussed in chapter 16 to using an iPhone if your friends use them. This gives Apple a competitive advantage over Google, who does provide their messaging application for iPhone in addition to Android.
In my personal experience this strategy by Apple is very effective. I personally use an Android phone, and in both high school and college the majority of my friends had iPhones. This meant that I didn’t have the texting over wifi abilities that they had when they were texting each other. More importantly groups of friends sometimes make group messages on iMessage that you can’t participate in if you are Android. This strategy was successful for my brother. He prefered the lower cost of the Android phone but largely because of iMessage switched to an iPhone.