Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “To Beat the iPhone, You Must… Be the iPhone?”.
All right so imagine this. You’re, creating a new startup smartphone company.. Your goal, of course, is to make it huge right, So you make your first phone, you launch with a bang. You’Ve got a bunch of enthusiasts on board and you’re slowly starting to grow this thing., And it starts going well in Europe and in India and a few other Asian markets. And you know things are starting to grow and go quite nicely..
But you notice, there’s not a lot of pickup in the United States for some reason. Now, there’s a few reasons why this might be., I mean a lot of people already know, there’s a surprisingly high amount of people who just walk into a carrier store to buy Their phones in the US, so if you don’t have a deal with a carrier, then things might not go well for you there., And this is a enthusiast-only thing., They’re selling them online. So that’s understandable., But then you get to the stats and the stats say. The iPhone has somewhere around 50 % market share in the US, which is higher than the global average, and it is steadily growing, every single year.
And worst of all, 87 %. That’S not a typo, 87 % of teenagers in the US have an iPhone., And that honestly feels like the most damning one, because that means they got them. Early., Like everyone knows about the walls. Apple builds up around their ecosystem to try to keep people in the iPhone walled garden., But 87 % of teenagers.
That just means that this is a lot of these people’s first phones.. These people will be iPhone. Customers for life maybe. Like for a lot of them, their friends all have iPhones, and if they’re gon na get their first phone for the first time, they don’t really even consider anything that isn’t also an iPhone.. It’S the only way to get into all the group chats with their friends.. It’S the only way to get in on all the inside jokes and socializations that happen after school, from the FaceTimes to the iMessages and all the things that are just iPhone only..
So it’s a very baked-in thing., It’s a very US-centric thing for sure, but it is everywhere.. So this is why, when I made that “ Blue Bubbles vs. Green Bubbles Explained !” video, I had to put that disclaimer in the beginning of the video. But that’s why half the comments were like “ Yeah. I live in the US and I see this everywhere. There’s iPhones everywhere, and the pressure of the iPhone is very real.” And then the other half of the comments are like “. This is the dumbest thing.
I’Ve ever seen., Why do people care so much about which phone people use Just use? Whatsapp., It’s super easy.”, And so that’s why that dichotomy exists.? But you know you get the idea., So you are that smartphone company. You’re in this position. You’re trying to break out in the US..
What do you do? It’S a real question and, as some of you may have picked up by the title and premise of this video, it’s a real company too., It’s Nothing.! This is a company. That’S made their first two phones. Now they’ve got some accessories, they’re trying to break out, and their options seem to be just give up on the US or maybe try to strike a carrier deal and get in that way. But it doesn’t seem like it might work or just lean all the way. In and embrace the actual heart of the question, the number one problem, the biggest asset of the other side. And that’s what they’re doing.. So what Nothing has decided to do and they’re announcing this today is they have built iMessage into their Android phone kind, of.. So they’ve announced a new app that is gon na, come out and be exclusive to the Nothing Phone 2 to start, and it’s called the Nothing Chats app.
And their goal with this is to literally offer iMessage also on their phone.. Now, how does this work? You might be asking Great question. Glad you asked., So I’ve got it here.. This is an app that’s co-developed, with a company called Sunbird who has been doing this for a little while in a restricted beta.
You might’ve heard of it and there’s also a couple of others floating around like this. And, basically, what it does is it lets. You sign into it using an Apple ID., So you can just sign up for an Apple account without any Apple products.. You sign up for an Apple ID and then you sign into the app, and it will give you as many iMessage features as possible without actually having an iPhone..
So, okay, a couple of things about this. One, this Nothing Chats app when you first sign in is pretty intuitive.. You go through the setup process to create a Nothing account and then connect your Apple ID.. So, like I said you can make an Apple ID, even if you have no Apple products and then you sign in and then everything just seems to work, fine., It’s more or less looking exactly like a skinned version of the Sunbird beta, app. And so sure enough. When you go to message an iPhone or join any group chat that has a bunch of iPhones in it things that would not work with an Android phone before it basically starts off by sending, through a virtual contact card, asking to merge your contact info with your Apple ID email address and then suddenly it all works and you’re a blue bubble and you’re texting people with iMessage from your Android phone..
Also high-quality media is working., So you might have heard of this issue already.. This is actually one of my biggest annoyances, but when you message an iPhone with an Android phone or vice versa – and you send like a video or a photo, it’s like super blurry because it’s been compressed a lot to fit in the file size limits of MMS.. But now you actually get that full-resolution photo and video treatment as if you’re just two iPhones talking to each other, which is actually very convenient.. Typing indicators work when another person has been typing for a while and they’re, also working on the reactions as well..
It’S not in this beta that I’ve been testing, but they say they’re gon na have that around the end of this year., But then number two they’re saying that they’re launching this as an exclusive app for the Nothing Phone 2. So just this phone – and I imagine future Nothing phones as well to sort of give people that option where if they were gon na, buy a new phone and they really wan na be in the iMessage group. Chats and all the iMessage features, and they could only buy an iPhone they’ll at least also have this phone as an option..
But then three. This is the big one, and I cannot stress this enough. This could lead to enormous security, issues.
Signing in with your Apple ID onto a device that you don’t own, is an enormous security issue and it’s a huge risk to anyone using it.. Same thing is also true about Beeper and the others., Because the way this one works – and I’ve confirmed this with Nothing – is when you sign in with an Apple ID, it’s literally signing in on some Mac Mini in a server farm somewhere and that Mac Mini will. Then do all of the routing for you to make this happen.. You will never see or actually hold or use that Mac Mini..
Now. No one else is supposed to be able to use or see that Mac Mini or your messages on it because it’s all encrypted, but you are still logging in with your own Apple ID on someone else’s computer.. I don’t know how else to put that. Like that.
On its face is a big enough risk that many people will never even wan na try this. But hey if you’re Nothing. Well, maybe this is just enough to be able to say “, Hey we’re offering iMessage on an Android phone.” Like this is a young and crazy enough company that they’re gon na try stuff like this. So maybe people will consider a Nothing phone in the US.
Instead of an iPhone that everyone seems to just choose by default., I actually talked to Nothing about this, as I was testing it before. This is all going live and I actually asked Carl Pei straight up “. What do you think Apple is going to do or say about this once they find out about it? ?” Because, as this video goes, live Apple’s finding out about this. And his answer was “, Honestly, probably nothing.”, But just because there’s a weird timeline, we’re living in here in 2023, where Apple kind of can’t really retaliate publicly, because they’ve already been up against so much Antitrust pressure., Everyone already knows Apple is using iMessage and its powers to keep people from leaving the iPhone. But if Apple now like publicly acknowledges this as a competitor in the space that they’ve got ta shut down or something like that, it could sort of shine a light on it in a way they don’t actually want so they’ll, probably just quietly sweep it under the Rug and maybe just point out some security risks involved with the whole thing., But then, of course, the other side of the coin is: if Apple cares so much about security, then wouldn’t they wan na support RCS so that the millions of messages that go back and Forth between Android phones and iPhones every day won’t be unencrypted SMS, But that’s another story for another day., But at the end of the day the real question is: will it work? Will this strategy of offering some iMessage stuff on their phone exclusively actually work for Nothing to break out in the US, And the fact is: there’s a non-zero number of people who will be willing to try this to give themselves the iMessage the blue bubble life, while Still using a different phone., There’s, probably somebody out there who’s like “, I might buy a Nothing phone, but also all my friends have iPhones, so I guess I can’t.” And for them this is real, it’s great, but there’s a lot of baggage with that and it’s Sort of a weird timeline we’re living in now that this is actually a possible thing that could happen.. Let me know what your thoughts are in the comment section below.
If you think this will work. Thanks for watching. Catch, you guys in the next one. Peace. (, energetic music, ) .