Facebook's main competitor is Apple. Mark Zuckerberg will go directly against iMessage with his new service

11. 3. 2019

Facebook plans to launch a service combining messages from Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram. According to Mark Zuckerberg, this at first glance strange merger should primarily strengthen the security of messages. But according to Slate magazine, the merger of the platforms will also make Facebook a direct competitor to Apple.

Until now, Facebook and Apple have been rather complementary – people bought Apple devices to use Facebook services such as social networks or WhatsApp.

Apple device owners usually don't allow iMessage, both because of the user-friendly interface and the end-to-end encryption. iMessage was one of the main things that differentiated Apple from Android devices, as well as one of the main reasons why many users remained loyal to Apple.

Despite the high demand, iMessage has yet to find its way to the Android OS, and the likelihood that it will ever happen is practically zero. Google failed to come up with a full-fledged alternative to iMessage, and most Android device owners use Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp instead of services such as Hangouts to communicate.

Mark Zuckerberg himself called iMessage one of Facebook's strongest competitors, and especially in the United States, no operator has managed to lure users away from iMessage. At the same time, the founder of Facebook does not hide the fact that by combining WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger, he wants to provide users with an experience as similar as possible to that provided by iMessage to owners of Apple devices.

The relationship between Apple and Facebook certainly cannot be described as simple. Tim Cook has repeatedly taken the operator of the popular social network to task because of controversies associated with endangering the privacy of users. Earlier this year, Apple even temporarily cut off Facebook from access to its certification program. In turn, Mark Zuckerberg criticized Apple for its relations with the Chinese government. He claims that if Apple really cared about its customers' privacy, it would refuse to store data on Chinese government servers.

Can you imagine the merger of WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook in practice? Do you think a combination of messages from these three platforms could really compete with iMessage?

Source: Slate

Topics: Hangouts, Mark Zuckerberg, Messenger, WhatsApp, iMessage, Facebook, Tim Cook, Android, Google, program

Discussion of the article

Jarek O

11. 3. 2019 17:30

I don't use WhatsApp as a replacement, but as an alternative to iMessage to communicate with my most distant friends. In my opinion, the combination of WA with FB and IG will create an unusable mess and it will be an impetus for me to test Viber again after years. What Zuckerberg reaches for will slow down, quite rightly I did not believe the kids about the immutability of WA when he bought it…

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