There’s an even bigger threat to iMessage than the DOJ lawsuit, and it’s firmly targeting Apple’s US market and its millions of iPhone users…
Apple’s last iMessage bastion is under threat
Update 5/4 below. article originally published 5/1.
While all eyes are on Apple games in China, where Huawei’s 2024 surge has set iPhone sales on fire, a much quieter battle just brought a new twist closer. There’s no iPhone without iMessage—and Apple’s insistence on keeping its encrypted messenger inside a walled garden is front and center DOJ lawsuit. But it may just be that the biggest threat comes from an entirely different direction.
Apple prioritizes security when it comes to iMessage—to a degree. Because while it is undeniably a highly secure platform, leading even to the current scientific work of the day which is post-quantum cryptography, it has an embarrassingly wide-open vulnerability. iMessage is secure between Apple users—but bring an Android device into the mix and that security literally disappears.
This is why WhatsApp – despite its Meta masters – is the much better choice. Seamless cross-platform, end-to-end encryption that protects messages, voice and video, and a user base of nearly 3 billion that means almost everyone has the app.
That’s why WhatsApp leads in almost all markets around the world, but not in America, especially among young people. as The Financial Times explained last year, “Apple has captured Gen Z in the US so thoroughly that younger consumers fear being socially ostracized for not having an iPhone.”
And iMessage is a key part of that success, as we know—which is the supposed reason for the lack of cross-platform options. As one almost youth ambassador said The FT, “a green message—anyone with Android—blocks the entire conversation, because now the whole thing has to be SMS. So the social pressure to get an iPhone is pretty crazy.”
But all that could change. WhatsApp has used the network effect in all other regions around the world and now has its sights set on the US in general and iMessage in particular. There’s no love lost between Apple and Meta—depending on Apple’s crackdown on Meta’s data collection. Mark Zuckerberg has personally highlighted the iMessage lock in the US as an issue that needs to be overcome. “iMessage is the key link in their ecosystem – that’s why iMessage is the most used messaging service in the US.”
Earlier this year we saw WhatsApp’s Unlock America campaign pick up steam, with Apptopia report WhatsApp USA iPhone installs 5% compared to last year to 68 million, and 9 to 5 Mac that the daily active user base in the US increased by 9%. “Suddenly, everyone in the US seems to be using WhatsApp,” wrote Alex Kantrowitz Great Technology.
WhatsApp takes on iMessage at home
Just a few weeks later and suddenly it’s a much bigger problem for Apple. The US has “entered the conversation,” Zuckerberg shared on his WhatsApp channel. “We’re seeing double-digit growth in messages and daily users on WhatsApp in the US.”
This has come — but it’s accelerating fast. WhatsApp taking on iMessage in the US was “a once unthinkable prospect,” according to Kantrowitz. “Perhaps this ends with WhatsApp assuming the leadership role in the US that it currently holds globally. The possibility is less far-fetched than it was even in the recent past.’
The issue for Apple is not the growth of WhatsApp in the US, but what that growth means for iMessage as a whole. When you remove a blue-bubble user base and introduce seamless cross-platform messaging as secure as iMessage, with easier voice and video calling, it’s hard to look back. And the network effect is fueling growth, as the Department of Justice said: “As more people use the app, there are more people to communicate with through the app, which makes the app more valuable and in turn attracts even more users.”
Once this network effect starts, it’s almost impossible to go back—especially with messaging platforms that connect countless groups of users and two-way conversations into an easy-to-use, secure, and private enclave.
As I’ve said before, “if iMessage is your primary messenger, then I know two things about you. First, you have an iPhone—because Apple won’t let iMessage play nice with anyone who doesn’t. And second, you’re probably in North America—because the rest of us mostly use WhatsApp. “iMessage is seen as SMS texting, which people just don’t do anymore.”
And so it looks like 2024 will be just as interesting as billed. WhatsApp’s push comes at the wrong time for Apple, with the Justice Department lurking on the other side of this debate. “By rejecting solutions that would allow cross-platform encryption,” its lawsuit argued, “Apple continues to make iPhone users less secure than they might otherwise be.” The lawsuit cited various allegations from the past decade that Apple’s refusal to share iMessage with commercial Android and to counter the interests of users.
“People love WhatsApp and other texting apps.” The New York Times he said, “Americans are talking in their own bubble.” With the dominance of iMessage and the normalization of SMS, this was understandable. And while next-gen SMS RCS technology is coming this fall with iOS 18, it’s not full integration and won’t—we understand—kill green bubbles or bring encryption to multiple platforms.
Apple vigorously pushed back against the DOJ’s claims, just as it did with Europe’s DMA. And where the push is a wider stripping of his walled garden, I agree. iPhone is different than Android, more secure, more locked down and should stay that way. But when. it’s about messages, the argument is much more difficult. Users are not well served by reverting to SMS now and RCS absent full encryption anytime soon when the alternative platform full encryption is so readily available.
“In many other countries” The times it said, “text messages are done through a smartphone app like WhatsApp by Meta.” Now this overdue change is fast approaching the US, and WhatsApp has shown that it’s a one-way street.
And so, Apple is ready…
Update 05/04: The battle between WhatsApp and iMessage in the US, targeting the millions of GenZ users who have forged the blue bubble hierarchy, is as dominant a challenge as you’ll find in the messaging world.
However, WhatsApp plays an entirely different role in other parts of the world, and there its separation from either of the main phone ecosystems – iPhone and Android – has proven to be an advantage. While Telegram makes headlines as the disruptive network of choice in parts of the world where communications are threatened, WhatsApp actually functions as a quasi-telephone network to a greater extent.
I have mentionted previously about the critical value of WhatsApp’s voice and video calling ecosystem, which is also end-to-end encrypted and offers a lifeline to parts of the world that are more susceptible to unauthorized or casual call monitoring than we see in USA and most parts of Europe. This is just as critical as messaging.
And the comments made by WhatsApp boss Will Cathcart BBC News this week hammer home the point. “Tens of millions” have found ways to access the app, he said, even in countries that seek to completely or sporadically ban its use. “You’d be surprised how many people have figured it out.”
We’re talking about places like Iran and North Korea, but also parts of Africa, Asia and the wider Middle East. And while on most of these sites the requirement is simply to use a VPN to hide your WhatsApp traffic and routing, the Meta platform also offers proxy service—from last year, which allows the deployment of proxy servers within the country, which means that the first routing from a device is benign and only then the connection goes to WhatsApp itself, with its full security intact.
Cathcart told the BBC that the platform tracks connection numbers from those parts of the world where it is banned, but where local phone numbers are actively used. “We have a lot of anecdotal reports of people using WhatsApp, and what we can do is look at some of the countries where we’re seeing blocking, and we’re still seeing tens of millions of people connecting to WhatsApp.”
For iPhone users of iMessage in the US – who are at the heart of WhatsApp’s growth in the US – the idea of relying on a messaging app for secure communications will seem strange. But traveling in Asia, Middle East, Africa and your business contacts will use such platforms for calling by default. Local networks are not reliable.
“We’re very proud of the fact that we provide secure private communication that’s free from authoritarian government surveillance,” Cathcart explained, “or even government censorship, to people around the world who wouldn’t otherwise have that—But it’s a constant threat and a constant battle’.
At some points the complications get much worse, of course. China has banned WhatsApp—as well as some other secure messaging platforms—and it’s not available on Apple’s local App Store. iPhone users abroad can use the app over a VPN, and Android users have sideloading options, while iPhone users don’t.
WhatsApp remains my recommended daily messenger for many reasons – it’s philosophy of free and secure communication and the somewhat annoying distancing from the parent Meta when pushed for tighter integration or data sharing is one reason.
It is clear that WhatsApp is first and foremost a secure communication platform. It is a built-in philosophy. “That’s one of the reasons we had to communicate so much about it,” says Cathcart, “to be really clear about what it means and what’s at stake.”
