For a long time, Google has been trying to improve the cross-platform messaging experience between its Messages app and Apple's iMessage. Most recently, Google announced a feature for Messages users that enables emoji reactions to SMS texts from iPhone users sent via iMessage. However, Apple is not even acknowledging the issue, and from what it looks like, the company has no plans of addressing it anytime soon. Apple's Senior Vice President of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi, has stated in an interview that making an iMessage for Android users would have held back Apple from innovating its own app.
Answering questions from Joanna Stern at the Wall Stream Journal's Tech Live event, Federighi spoke about several topics, including Apple switch to USB-C and iMessage for Android. During the interaction, Stern brought up an email from 2013, written by Federighi, where he said to Apple's Eddie Cue that creating an iMessage app for Android devices will result in removing an "obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones."
Later in the conversation (via email), Apple's Phil Schiller mentioned that "iMessage amounts to serious lock-in." These messages clearly indicate that Apple does not want its users to experience the iMessage service on other platforms, keeping them from switching. This could mean that at some point in the past, the company officials were talking about an iMessage for Android app.
When Stern read back the email to Federighi, he responded, "If we're going to enter a market and go down the road of building an application, we have to be in it in a way that's going to make a difference. That we would have a lot of customers that we would be able to deliver great experiences."
Adding to it, the Apple executive said that "if we just shipped an app that didn't get critical mass on other platforms, what it would have accomplished is that it would have held us back in innovating in all the way we wanted to innovate in messages for our customers." At its best, Federighi's answer justifies why Apple has not released an iMessage app for Android.
However, contrary to what he says, millions of Android users are out there, and it would be ignorant to assume that they don't send or receive messages from iPhone users. If Android users get a chance to experience how iMessage works, it opens the possibility of migration from one platform to the other. Nevertheless, Apple has no intentions of releasing an iMessage app for Android users or bridging the gap between both apps' SMS and RCS protocols.
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