I’m kinda surprised another company hasn’t made something to legit compete with iMessage yet.
There have been more iMessage competitors than I can even count. None have been able to amass enough users to challenge iMessage in the US. RCS is a different approach that has a shot, but even that would require apple to implement it in order to reach ubiquity. Apple has the US messaging market by the balls and it sucks.
What annoys me is that Google still hasn’t opened the API for RCS all these years later. That could at the very least open the possibility of more widespread adoption as a fallback for other apps instead of SMS. But instead they’re too busy crying that Apple won’t adopt it to actually be bothered to make a unified approach on their own turf. I don’t see how they can imagine Apple will want to adopt it when they’re keeping it so close to their chests that nobody else is allowed to use it other than basically them and Samsung. It’s maddening.
I guess by competitor I mean in the sense that’s like a free service that doesn’t harvest data and is e2e. Only thing I can think of with mild adoption rates is signal although I think that it’s also my bias since I use it. Hardest part is being able to run these services with little to no income from the service and apple is able to get away with it since they make money off of other stuff.
There have been more iMessage competitors than I can even count. None have been able to amass enough users to challenge iMessage in the US. RCS is a different approach that has a shot, but even that would require apple to implement it in order to reach ubiquity. Apple has the US messaging market by the balls and it sucks.
What annoys me is that Google still hasn’t opened the API for RCS all these years later. That could at the very least open the possibility of more widespread adoption as a fallback for other apps instead of SMS. But instead they’re too busy crying that Apple won’t adopt it to actually be bothered to make a unified approach on their own turf. I don’t see how they can imagine Apple will want to adopt it when they’re keeping it so close to their chests that nobody else is allowed to use it other than basically them and Samsung. It’s maddening.
I guess by competitor I mean in the sense that’s like a free service that doesn’t harvest data and is e2e. Only thing I can think of with mild adoption rates is signal although I think that it’s also my bias since I use it. Hardest part is being able to run these services with little to no income from the service and apple is able to get away with it since they make money off of other stuff.
WhatsApp is E2EE but it is run by Meta, so YMMV.