The messaging battle between Facebook and Apple, which has been heating up fast, has just became more interesting. Could it be that WhatsApp has finally found a way to strike at iMessage where it hurts the most? A surprise new report certainly suggests so. And this will put a huge smile on Mark Zuckerberg’s face.
“Suddenly, everyone in the US seems to be using WhatsApp,” reports Alex Kantrowitz in his Big Technology newsletter, prompted by a report just out from Apptopia, showsing WhatsApp US iPhone installs up 5% on last year to more than 68 million.
As 9to5Mac points out, not only is “WhatsApp is becoming more popular among iPhone users,” but the daily active US user base is also up 9%. All of which will give Apple food for thought with its iMessage walled garden under increased scrutiny.
“For many,” Kantrowitz suggests, WhatsApp has become “the default messenger, a drama-free alternative to Apple and Android’s blue vs. green bubble wars… WhatsApp may even threaten [iMessage] as the country’s most popular messaging app, a once unthinkable prospect.”
The playoff between iOS and Android messaging, including the Beeper Mini fiasco and regulatory interest, is a boon to WhatsApp. It has come to dominate on Android and outside the US, while iMessage has done the opposite.
While WhatsApp offers much more seamless cross-platform messaging than communicating between iMessage and Google Messages, the hope had been that RCS would resolve this and offer more of a WhatsApp match. But at least from the get go, when RCS hits iMessage later this year, it won’t be seamless app-to-app, but rather just an improvement over SMS, with the two ecosystems remaining very separate.
And nowhere is this more the case than on privacy and security. iMessage’s RCS announcement falls short of matching the secure cross-platform ecosystem WhatsApp provides. While iMessage and Google Messages will be end-to-end encrypted within their own ecosystems, dare to message someone who is not, and that security falls away. And that just might be hitting home across the US user base.
So, how important is the US to iMessage? Well, just look at Zuckerberg’s comments a few years back. “We increasingly see Apple as one of our biggest competitors,” he told analysts in 2021. “iMessage is a key linchpin of their ecosystem—which is why iMessage is the most used messaging service in the US.”
In reality, while WhatsApp will push the RCS limitations as a marketing ploy when Apple’s implementation plans are confirmed ahead of iOS 18, there’s still a huge gulf between it and iMessage in the US. But WhatsApp has proven itself adept at scaling, and the door is definitely opening for the first time.
And one factor that is often underestimated is the network effect. In the US, if WhatsApp is little used across groups, then there is little appetite for change. But once some members of the group begin to install the app and change their messaging habits, others do the same. And on and on. That’s why this is a genuine threat. It’s this network effect that has scaled WhatsApp elsewhere—it’s just come late to the US.
Each of those millions of new US iOS WhatsApp installs represents someone who is likely either responding to or who might now begin just such a network effect.
A key part of this viral adoption is the wider levels of functionality that have become part of messaging platforms. The number of voice and video calls across WhatsApp is now staggering, with users making 2 billion such calls daily. Travel to Asia or the Middle East, and these end-to-end encrypted calls have become the norm. That’s not the case in the US, but seamless messaging-to-calling integration has been followed by Apple with iMessage to FaceTime calling—but, again, not cross-platform.
Add this to the social norms of WhatsApp groups, be they work, family friends, school parents, clubs, etc, the fact that you don’t have to think twice about whether a contact will have the app installed, and—credit to Apple—even the ease of integration into your iPhone, and this ease of WhatsApp scaling becomes evident.
if you haven’t done already, try changing your default calling method from normal cell calls to WhatsApp. Change the numbers of your “Favorites” to WhatsApp calls, and you’ll see how easy it is to shift to encrypted IP calling by default.
WhatsApp knows all this, of course. Its recent leaked update to highlight end-to-end encryption on its iOS client will emphasize the point when iMessage launches an RCS without the same. And it has run its first major marketing campaigns in the US over the last two years. It always centers on privacy and security, which fits perfectly here.
“Meta wants this to work, sees momentum, and is pushing hard to capitalize,” Kantrowitz says. “And so perhaps this ends with WhatsApp assuming the leadership role in the US that it currently occupies globally. The possibility is less farfetched than it was in even the recent past.”
All of which is why 2024 promises to be the most interesting year for messaging apps in a long time. Expect this to heat up right until we reach iOS release season in the fall, and for the WhatsApp Vs iMessage story to run and run. Watch this space.