People like to mention the phrase “walled garden” when they talk about Apple, a tightly branded ecosystem into which iPhone and Mac users bind themselves after purchase. In hardware, the walls are getting higher: in its latest update to the iPhone, Apple ditched the traditional headphone jack, forcing consumers to shell out on its proprietary earphones.
Things seem to be moving in the opposite direction for Apple’s world of software services.
Earlier this year Apple announced it was opening iMessage up to third-party application developers like Circle, a payments app, and a version of Tinder called Tinder Stacks. Now it’s been reported that Apple is looking at distributing one of its most popular apps, iMessage, onto rival platform Android.
A post on John Gruber’s Daring Fireball about the “stickiness” of iMessage mentions, as an aside, that Apple has been taking a serious look at developing a version of the chat app for Android. Specifically, Gruber says that "mockups of iMessage for Android have circulated within the company, with varying [user-interface] styles ranging from looking like the iOS Messages app to pure material design.”
By this he means a design that fits in with Android’s own house style. Gruber points out that Apple Music for Android uses Android’s system font, its standard hamburger menu for the sidebar, and an Android style navigation controller.
With sales of Apple’s flagship iPhone sliding for the third quarter in the row (based on its latest financial results released Tuesday), wouldn’t putting a popular app like iMessage on Android risk sending more iPhone users into the arms of Google and its handset partners?
Gruber thinks not. ”iMessage for Android would surely lead some number of iPhone users to switch to Android," he concedes, “but I think that number is small enough to be a rounding error for Apple.” The tradeoff could be worth it because of Apple’s grander vision of building proprietary digital services like iTunes into thriving businesses.
This makes sense when you think about how Apple, for the most part, has struggled to make apps that people actually use. iTunes and iMessage have been phenomenally successful; Apple Maps, Podcasts, Tips, iBooks, not so much. Many of Apple's own apps tend to get relegated to the last page of iPhone users' home screens. Hence the vast majority of popular apps used on the iPhone come from third-party developers.
But iMessage has been one of the few blockbuster hits among a string of mediocre apps made by Apple, and if Apple can figure out how to monetize the platform with something like, say, a proprietary payments service, that could be a useful revenue driver both on iOS and Android.
Of course this isn’t the first time we’ve heard rumours of Apple bringing iMessage to Android. Earlier this summer MacDailyNews reported that Apple would be launching an Android version of its chat app at its annual developers conference, WWDC. That never happened.
But just a couple of days later, Walt Mossberg of the Verge reported on a conversation he’d had with a senior Apple executive, who explained why iMessage wasn’t coming to Google's platform. The main reason seemed to be this: “Having a superior messaging platform that only worked on Apple devices would help the sale of those devices.”
That might not be reflective of what all of Apple’s management in software is thinking right now about iMessage. And if it looks like the revenue they make from iMessage as a service can offset what they lose from people switching to Android phones, they might be more than willing to break that walled garden down a little further.
Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, discusses messaging on... [+]
