The Problem with iMessage

The U.S. Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit against Apple claims that Apple’s iMessage service degrades messaging quality when iOS users communicate with anyone using a device that doesn’t run Apple’s operating system. iMessage is an excellent—almost pardigmmatic—example of a market dominator excluding competition. But as the tech and legal worlds have digested the DOJ’s complaint, the discussion has mostly missed the key problem with iMessage: it’s rarely had to compete fairly with other messaging apps, and when it does, it loses.

Apple popularized iMessage by taking advantage of the iOS hardware and software stack, which Apple controls completely. To this day, iMessage is insulated from competition, and Apple continues to use iMessage to lock users into its ecosystem.

Discussion of iMessage tends to proceed from the assumptions that 1) the problem is that non-Apple users want access to Apple’s messaging service; and 2) the proposed solution is that Apple be required to open iMessage to users of other platforms. Neither assumption is correct.

The iMessage Origin Story

iMessage launched with iOS 5 in October 2011. It was provided as part of Apple’s Messages app. At the time (in the United States, at least, more on this later), communication via text message was ubiquitous and mostly occurred via the Short Message Service (SMS) over mobile networks. SMS was built in the 1980s, when data transfer was extremely limited. It’s an open protocol that anyone can use, and phone carriers have relied on it for decades to send text messages. It lacks features and security, and iMessage was unquestionably an upgrade in those regards.

But the way Apple introduced iMessage was sneaky. iPhone users were used to sending SMS messages via the Messages app. When Apple launched iMessage, it changed the way the Messages app worked. Instead of just sending a text message over SMS, the app checked to see if the recipient’s device was running iOS. If so, the app silently and secretly intercepted the message and sent it over Apple’s proprietary iMessage service rather than the open SMS protocol.

This was underhanded for a couple of reasons. First, iMessage is the default messaging app on iOS, and you can’t change it. So users who followed their normal messaging workflow ended up using iMessage unintentionally. Even if an iOS user wanted to switch to a different messaging app, they couldn’t. It’s possible to disable iMessage entirely, but you’d have know about that function and dig into the iOS settings to do so.

Second, Apple’s Messages app is the only app that can send and receive SMS messages on iOS. That’s not true on Android,¹ but if you want to send SMS messages from an iPhone—which almost everybody does (again, at least in the United States)—Apple’s app is your only option.

So Apple popularized iMessage by infiltrating the widely used and open SMS protocol. Apple took advantage of the fact that, as the device and operating system manufacturer, it had total control of access to iOS devices’ mobile radios. And so Apple could intercept the normal text messaging process that users were familiar with and divert them to iMessage instead. No other messaging app on iPhone could do anything like that. So iMessage became popular with iPhone users not because it’s a great messaging service, but because it was essentially the only game in town. And Apple fought very hard to keep it that way.

iMessage became popular not because Apple built the best messaging app, but because Apple forced iMessage into users’ existing workflow and prohibited any competitor from doing something similar.

Apple fans tend to crow that the company is big and successful because it builds the best products. That may be true in some cases (especially hardware), but it’s just false in the context of iMessage. iMessage is a classic example of a dominant company using its market power to preclude competition and promote its own products.

I Don’t Want to Use iMessage

Arguments in support of Apple tend to proceed from the assumption that non-Apple users want access to iMessage. People who make these arguments assume that iMessage is a great product, and that non-iOS users want in. But that’s not the issue. iMessage is a mediocre messaging app. As an Android user, I don’t want access to iMessage. I just want my iOS-using friends to stop using it and start using better messaging apps instead. But because Apple flexed its monopolist muscles, iOS users have been powerfully conditioned to use iMessage as their default messaging servce.

The argument that Apple “won” with iMessage because it built a great product disintegrates completely when you look outside the United States. In most countries SMS never became popular like it did in the United States because SMS messages were (and in many cases still are) prohibitively expensive. So people started using other messaging apps like Telegram, WhatsApp, and Signal.

In those countries, Apple couldn’t sneak into iOS users’ messaging habits because people didn’t depend on SMS. Apple didn’t have control of those other apps’ messaging services, so it couldn’t intercept messages and route them through iMessage instead.

And it turns out that when Apple can’t force people to use iMessage, they don’t. Outside the United States, iMessage is rarely used, except in countries where SMS messaging was popular prior to iMessage’s launch. If iMessage was a fantastic product, people would switch to it without being forced to use it. But they simply don’t, because WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal all offer better messaging experiences. Unfortunately, those apps can’t compete with iMessage in places where SMS is popular because they can’t insinuate themselves into the SMS workflow.

iMessage Lock-In

The topic of iMessage lock-in has been more fully discussed, including in the context of antitrust and other regulatory actions against Apple. The idea is pretty simple: if you’ve used iMessage for a while, you’ve built up a chat histories and are used to the extra features iMessage offers over SMS. You also like being a blue bubble when you text other iOS users, and some of your group chats might even depend on your access to iMessage. So, even if you’re thinking about buying an Android device as your next phone, you’ll probably stick with Apple, not because it makes the best phones but because you can’t leave behind the iPhone-only iMessage features.

That lock-in argument takes on new importance when you consider the origin of iMessage’s popularity. Apple took advantage of its position in the market to force iMessage into iOS users’ workflow and then relied on iMessage’s exclusivity to encourage users to keep buying Apple products.

The Solution: Decoupling iMessage from SMS

Almost every discussion of the iMessage debacle suggests or assumes that the best solution—and perhaps the only solution to consider—is to require Apple to open iMessage to other platforms. But that’s not a good solution for a number of reasons. At the very least, it’s not fair to force Apple to give away a service it pays to operate, and it’s too intrusive into to Apple’s engineering of its own serivces.

Instead, Apple should be required to decouple its proprietary iMessage service from any messaging app that uses the open SMS protocol. In other words, SMS messaging and iMessage should be separate apps. Apple shouldn’t be able to invisibly intercept and reroute SMS messages to iMessage. Users should consciously choose which service to use. And, most importantly, iMessage should be required to compete fairly with other messaging apps.

If users had to reach for a separate app to send an iMessage—just like they do to message with Telegram, WhatsApp, or Signal—then iMessage would compete on a level playing field with those other messaging apps. And iMessage would lose, because its feature set isn’t as robust, it doesn’t offer as good a user experience, it isn’t as customizable as those other apps, and because it’s crippled by the limitation that it can only communicate with iOS devices.²

Without its unique ability to piggyback on SMS, iMessage would be relegated to the dust bin of pre-installed apps that no one ever uses.

The Airport Lounge Analogy

A couple months ago I mentioned an analogy that John Gruber, author of the popular Apple fan blog Daring Fireball, drew. I described the analogy as “bizarre and totally unpersuasive,” but I didn’t explain why. Gruber’s analogy doesn’t work for two reasons. First, it’s a strawman that proceeds from bad assumptions about criticisms of iMessage and their proposed resolutions. Second, it inaccurately depicts the world of messaging apps.

Gruber argues that Apple shouldn’t be required to open iMessage to non-iOS users because Apple pays to develop and operate iMessage. And so, Gruber reasons, Apple should be able to the set the terms of a service it pays for. This argument might seem appealing because that makes intuitive sense, but as we’ve seen, the problem with iMessage isn’t that it’s closed to non-iOS users (it’s that iMessage forces its way into open messaging workflows) and the solution isn’t to force Apple to open a closed protocol (it’s to require Apple to separate iMessage from the open SMS protocol). But even if we accept Gruber’s analogy on its own terms, it’s unpersuasive because it doesn’t accurately reflect users’ choice of messaging apps.

The analogy goes something this: picture an airport terminal. It’s crowded. Food and drinks are expensive, the chairs aren’t very comfortable, the WiFi is slow, and the bathrooms are dirty. But if you pay for a pass to an airport lounge, you can enter an exclusive area that offers free food and drinks, faster WiFi, comfy chairs, and clean bathrooms. SMS is the terminal that everyone can access, and iMessage is the lounge. The cost of entry to the lounge is buying an iOS device. And of course the lounge operator should be able to restrict access to paying customers because all of those things—fancy chairs, WiFi, food, and drinks—cost money.

Here’s a better airport terminal analogy. We still have the crowded, uncomfortable, and expensive main terminal. But we also have the iMessage lounge. It’s less crowded and has free soft drinks and snacks, but they’re shitty snacks—think of those pre-made bakery items you find in the grocery store that are often stale and don’t taste very good. You can only enter the iMessage lounge if you are currently using an iPhone.³

Then there are a bunch of other lounges: the Telegram, WhatsApp, and Signal lounges. These lounges are super nice. They have full bars with craft cocktails and hot chef-made meals. They’re also free to enter and use; you just have to sign up.

Why on earth would anyone ever go to the iMessage lounge? Well, in the United States, Apple has a deal with the TSA to direct anyone who is using an iPhone straight from security to the iMessage lounge. They don’t have to go to the iMessage lounge, but it’s the easiest thing to do, and an authority figure is, while not actually forcing them to go there, more than gently guiding them that way. To those users, the iMessage lounge seems fancy and exclusive, and they might not know those other options even exist.

But in other countries, where the TSA doesn’t run airport security, Apple can’t make a deal like that. So the iMessage lounge is mostly empty, and everyone is having a great time drinking free cocktails elsewhere.