Apple admits the reason iMessage will never appear on Android

The legal battle between game maker Epic Games and Apple is revealing many interesting facts behind each company’s business strategy. One of those things is why Apple never allows iMessage to be available on Android.

Apple knows that this messaging app is one of the effective barriers to keeping users from switching to Android, so the service will never appear on rival operating systems. The acknowledgment comes from emails as well as testimony from Apple employees as well as senior company officials mentioned in the court filing filed by Epic Games.

Epic Games argues that Apple is intentionally locking down users in its device ecosystem, and that iMessage is one of the key services to help do that. Epic’s court filing cited comments from Eddy Cue – Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, Craig Federighi – Senior Vice President of Software Engineering, and Mr. Phil Schiller. – leader of Apple, to reinforce his point.

An email from an anonymous Apple employee sent in 2016 said this: ” The number one difficulty for users to leave the Apple app universe is iMessage … iMessage is essentially the most important blocker .” The email also mentioned Phil Schiller’s comment that ” bringing iMessage to Android will do us more harm than it helps us, this email proves why .”

Epic’s profile also mentions Federighi’s comment: ” iMessage on Android will remove the barrier for families to use iPhones to buy Android for their children .” Although solutions to using iMessage on Android have been around for a few years now, there is no such thing as a very handy and stable application.

Epic’s profile also states that, after developing iMessage on iOS 5 in 2011, Eddy Cue admitted that Apple had thought of ” creating an iOS-compatible Android version ” to ” users on. Both platforms can seamlessly exchange messages. “But in the end such an application version was never developed.

This isn’t illegal in practice, but it’s one of Epic’s efforts to demonstrate Apple’s unfair trade practices against developers in preparation for the upcoming lawsuit. mine.

Refer to The Verge