TL;DR: Apple dominates the US smartphone market, but EU regulations may offer Android a chance for resurgence by enforcing messaging interoperability and standardizing hardware features.
This is so funny for someone from Europe. Nobody I know cares what phone you have.
And everyone is using chat apps, mostly WhatsApp or signal, so everybody has the same great chatting experience.
Said like someone who can’t afford an iPhone…
Just kidding, I use Samsung myself. It’s crazy how easy it is to brainwash Americans into worshiping their corporate gods. Couple of good ads and they will die for their brand or choice.
My wife was bullied into getting an iPhone because of her colleagues, and they were buy one get one free, so now I have one too.
It’s a phone, I’m happy
buy one get one free
Still got scammed, arguably lmao
People get so hostile over such things. I have an iPhone for business. I have a Pixel for my personal use. They’re alright. It depends on what you need. Still a smartphone enthusiast.
Ugh, sounds like some of my coworkers and MacBooks. Then you discover that MacBooks are seriously crippled compared to the Linux machine you were using and you get told one of:
- “What do you mean by $feature? I’ve never heard of that.”
- “Why would you want to do that?”
- Run a badly performing Linux VM in a janky hypervisor to do that
- Pay $10 for this little 3rd party app to fix the problem
Throw in some serious RSI pain from that tire fire of a keyboard and yeah, I have no idea why I switched.
Edit: Work machine. No way I’d pay for Apple with my own money.
I’m stuck working on a MacBook too and it’s horrendous. I plug it into a monitor and use a good keyboard, but it’ll never be useful as a portable computer with that garbage keyboard
Using more than one monitor was the first “Why would you want to do that?” moment. Window management on Macs is awful but adding screens makes it way worse. Coming from i3 and sway, with rich hotkeys and fast, straightforward window manipulation, it felt like someone forgot to finish writing the OS. It seems most people use only the laptop screen or have a single external monitor as an auxiliary? They just genuinely didn’t know why or how you use multiple monitors.
Tiling in macOS can be polyfilled with apps but there are tons of edge cases where it fails and the app’s hotkeys don’t flow well from the a handful of native keys, so it feels disjoint and bodged together. Also, if you “bump” a window, it’ll stay dislodged because it’s a poor mimicry of the real thing.
What are these edge cases you are talking about? I been using Rectangle for many years and have no issues with multi-monitor setup. My company with over 2000+ devs use this app without any issues.
Amethyst. Focusing on empty workspaces makes everything stop working. Certain window types (dialog popups, arguably that app shouldn’t be using popups) are “invisible” to it. System preferences is untouchable (fair) and shows up under all other active windows.
Americans are all about status symbols and knowing names. Runs in our eagle screeching capitalist blood.
It’s rough in the US. Most iPhone users will insist that iMessage is better and refuse to use anything else, and then whine when an android user is in a group chat and none of the features work.
I have several group chats with both android & iPhone users. No one complains. The only place I hear about people complaining is the Internet, never anyone in the wild.
Yes. Everybody and their grandma in Spain (at least) is using WhatsApp.
Thank you. Based EU citizens genuinely carrying the US on this issue, and we are looking forward to removable batteries.
Some modern phones still have removable batteries, like my Motorola e5 play, its quite useful if the phone locks up bad, I can pop the battery out to restart it.
Try to use something that’s something other than iOS or Android with Google services.
(I’m daily driving deGoogled Android, I can live, but just can get sick of all the pressure around world is taking on not having Google Play Store)
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The statement about a massive majority of iPhones in the Nordics is factually incorrect.
iPhone has a slight lead at one of the biggest vendors Komplett, but that is without counting the remaining 10 % which is almost exclusively Android units.
For clarity: Komplett operates in all the Nordic countries, but I would assume these numbers are for Norway, the richest of the bunch.It’s the same story at work where I am the responsible party for company phones: Pretty evenly distributed where some of the iPhones are chosen due to MLM solutions for those wishing certain solutions.
I can only speak for my own age group in my personal life, but I would say Android has a quite big lead with young adults.
Kids/teens might be a completely different story though.
This is such a weird headline. I’m not switching to Apple and know tons of people who also would never do that. Most people don’t care about blue vs. green chat bubbles, except for those who just use their iPhone as a status symbol.
Sure, messaging needs to get fixed, and I hope the EU pushes Apple towards open standards. But it’s not like there aren’t a ton of android manufacturers who are making money hand over fist on devices.
How old are you? A lot of this is a youth phenomenon. Shit I was out of college before the internet existed. I can’t possibly relate to 13 and 14yo kids getting their first phones now. Maybe they do care about the green bubble.
Look at the iMessage saga; Apple insists on treating Android owners like second-class citizens in group texts. Android owners can’t enjoy many modern messaging features with iPhone owners, such as high-quality media sharing, read receipts, and more.
Are WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, Signal, and such blocked in the US? What’s with that whining about iMessage?
Are WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, Signal, and such blocked in the US?
Of course they’re not blocked.
People just default to the app that comes pre-installed with their phone and sits right there on the first screen, because it’s marginally easier than picking a third party app in the App Store, installing it, and creating an account.
It’s the exact same argument that Microsoft made when they bundled Internet Explorer with their OS.
People just default to the app that comes pre-installed with their phone
Cannot confirm this is the case with messaging apps in the EU. Nobody uses iMessage and nobody uses whatever the current Google thing is each year. WhatsApp is dominat despite not being preinstalled on any major phone brand (certainly not Samsung and Apple).
Apples to oranges.
The reason is that messaging services like WhatsApp became popular in Europe because carriers charged exorbitant fees for SMS messaging at a time when no single phone manufacturer absolutely dominated the market. Apps like WhatsApp made it possible to communicate with people, no matter which specific phone or brand or platform they were using.
If the iPhone (with iMessage pre-installed) had been the dominant smartphone and ecosystem at the time, chances are that what’s happening in the US would have happened in Europe in exactly the same way.
It’s exactly the same argument as with Windows and Internet Explorer: if Windows had been one podunk operating system out of many, nobody would have cared. The whole issue was that Microsoft used the market dominance of Windows to quasi-lock users into Internet Explorer.
It’s exactly the same argument as with Windows and Internet Explorer
No, it’s not. Maybe I’ve looked at the wrong numbers but according to https://www.counterpointresearch.com/us-market-smartphone-share/ iPhones have a market share of 50–60% in the US, not 90% like Windows on PCs. It shouldn’t result in total iMessage dominance. If anything the somewhat equal market share should mean that Telegram/Signal/WhatApp/whatever should be especially popular.
“Market dominance” simply means that a single company has the means to shape the entire market - not that it must have 90+ percent market share.
You’re essentially arguing that it’s easier for a user to find a third party app in the App Store, install it, create an account in the app, and start messaging than it is to start messaging with the pre-installed first party app.
I don’t find that persuasive.
You’re essentially arguing that it’s easier for a user to find a third party app in the App Store, install it, create an account in the app, and start messaging than it is to start messaging with the pre-installed first party app.
I don’t find that persuasive.
It works in the rest of the world. Not hyperbole. In literally the rest of the world manages to do that. Only in the US does half of the user base let itself get bullied by the other half, instead of just using a service that works equally well on both. And while it’s technically “create an account in the app”, no normie user feels that an account is being created. Works with phone number, just enter a verification code, done.
I tried to use the Google chat apps. There were some nice ones. ( still missing allo). But they changed too often, so now no Google chat app anymore.
It’s not that I’m unable to install an app on my phone and learn how to use it, it’s that I’m unable to convince every person I know to install that app, then teach them all how to use it.
100% of iPhone users have iMessage. And they can use the same app to talk to 100% of their contacts.
Fragmentation is a huge problem for everything else. What percentage of Android users have any particular one of those apps you listed?
I only grudgingly install WhatsApp when I travel to Europe. Discordv and Slack are not really competitors in this space (though I’m sure there’s a small subset of users who use them that way). I have Signal and Telegram and yet I still use SMS with most of my contacts because that’s the only one that is guaranteed to work.
I’ve tried getting my friends onto Signal, with some amount of success. But many have eventually stopped using it because I was the only one they used it with. A couple of my iPhone-using family members reported that they stopped getting notifications from Signal because they used it so infrequently that iOS basically disabled it (I guess it does that after a month of disuse but I’m not sure exactly).
It’s a losing battle. We’ve fallen back to SMS.
Fragmentation is a huge problem for everything else. What percentage of Android users have any particular one of those apps you listed?
WhatApp is installed on little bit under 100% among all Android phones and iPhones in most EU countries and should the EU actually tackle messenger interoperability, iMessage is definitively not the main target. The most die-hard Apple fans I know use iMessage for a little bit when new features were introduced. Then they go back to WhatsApp like everybody else.
To be clear: I’m not an advocate of WhatApp here, I’m merely explaining that the EU does not care at all about Apple’s chat service nobody in the EU uses. Should any legislation even affect iMessage, it’ll be more coincidental, not targeted at it.
I don’t know about the rest of the world but in the UK text messages used to cost 10p for each one you send. Multimedia messages were like 40p. Really expensive. WhatsApp came about and made both of these free. The rest is history.
Ironically, SMS are generally free these days but nobody obviously uses them. My SMS app is just full of OTP codes being sent to me.
A couple of my iPhone-using family members reported that they stopped getting notifications from Signal because they used it so infrequently that iOS basically disabled it
THE BEST OS ever /s
Android does the same thing. I stopped getting telegram notifications because I hadn’t opened it up in a month. It’s a privacy feature. If you haven’t used an app in a while, it removes all the permissions it had.
It’s so dumb. I have the same problem. I have an iPhone and I try to get them to use Signal, but they just keep using SMS and we keep getting garbage video being sent over group text since some of the group uses Android. When I complain they start putting stuff in Google Photo Albums instead of just using a decent messenger.
It’s sad and I don’t have it but here in Europe Whatsapp doesn’t seem far from 100%!
such as high-quality media sharing, read receipts, and more.
Who tf wants read receipts? The first thing I do on a new phone is make sure that shit is turned off.
I mean, maybe google should stop shooting themselves in the foot when it comes to messaging. See: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/a-decade-and-a-half-of-instability-the-history-of-google-messaging-apps/
If you think Apple will implement these changes outside the E.U. you gotta be insane.
Also with the news that Qualcomm is hiking prices again, Samsung releasing their least ambitious Smartphone lineup ever this year, Oneplus annihalting their core audience, Huawei being banned, Xiaomi releasing the most confusing product stack imaginable, and Google taking another year off on adding meaningfull features to Android, is this really surprising?
Yeah, what a shame Android is not adding meaningful features like… checks notes… https://www.wired.com/story/apple-iphone-ios-17-ipados-17-new-features/ stickers, contact posters, some updated apps and… showing time. My god, the things I miss on Android!
@ExLisper @aluminium Android and iOS have been intercalating featureful and polishing updates with each other for a while now.
No, there are definitly things that iOS has that are lacking on Android. Same is true the other way around of course. For example, Spotlight Search on iOS is awesome, Automations are a neat tool to have, Focus Modes - not something for me - but cool for those who want it, Lockscreen customization is really good now on iOS, Backups work way better, Idle battery drain - much better on iOS…
Idle battery drain, the bane of Android’s existence. Remember when Google started to literally sleep components based on gyroscope movement data to try to save battery? And forevermore Android users were forced to deal with a phone that won’t get notifications until after you pick it up?
Yes because I didn’t know about any of this
If you think Apple will implement these changes outside the E.U. you gotta be insane.
I’m interested in the logistics of this. I’m an EU citizen, I prefer using Signal for my messaging, but I do my share of Whatsapp with some people. What the EU mandates is that Apple provides an open API for everyone else to implement sending messages with to iMessage. So as an EU citizen, I will need to be able to use the API to send messages to other EU citizens. Will I be also able to send messages to people outside of the EU or will the API just say that’s not permitted? Does that infringe on my rights as an EU citizen? If it does, and I need to be permitted, will a group chat for example stop working as I leave if I’m the only European?
Apple dominates? They have just over 50% of a carrier driven market. That’s not domination.
one single company have over 50% market share? thats domination in my book
I mean, that’s not a huge amount more than androids market share. And that’s just the US, worldwide android has something like 70% market share. As long as it’s dominating worldwide, it’s not gonna die out in the US.
I dunno, the numbers look different if you account for the many different companies that make up that android glob, while any and all ios devices are from a single company
Well, the article is about Android, the operating system. It isn’t about those hardware companies.
iPhone also has over 50% market share in Japan, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Australia and more. Currently it doesn’t have 50% market share worldwide. But in more countries it is gaining market share.
A quick search says Amazon is 37% of online commerce (depending on which sketchy result you want to trust enough for a Lemmy thread).
If Amazon is problematic, then Apple is a serious issue.
Like 90% of the under-20 market…
Only the EU can save Android in the US now
That sounds a little melodramatic. Apple has a slightly higher marketshare in the US, and that’s the case in few places:
Google has fallen second place to Apple in the Android vs. iPhone war for the first time in over a decade.
From a global perspective, Apple’s dominance is an outlier. The US, Canada and Japan are the only countries where Apple has an edge over Android. Everywhere else Android leads, usually by a wide margin.
And, I gotta say:
But this has also brought a rising tide of elitism, as some US iPhone owners perceive Android as cheaper and inferior.
I think that maybe, the point where one’s favored platform has slightly under 50% marketshare in an – admittedly large – country is maybe just a bit premature to start wallowing in victimhood.
https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/01/21/
It doesn’t help Android OEMs that Apple makes it exceptionally difficult to leave its ecosystem or switch between platforms. For starters, the company’s services are either exclusive to its platforms (iMessage) or woefully underbaked on Android (see Apple TV Plus and Facetime)
iOS is more of a walled garden, that’s true, but Google is not entirely innocent here either.
Look, android lost the lead in market share, but it’s still a huge part of the market. It’s not dying off for years to come, if it even does.
It will if google shitposts a bit harder
I’ve seen this a lot lately on lemmy - that android needs “saving” or that we need government intervention to stop Apple. But, I would argue that android is its own worst enemy. Even the best android phones are plagued by quality issues, both hardware and software. Google’s own pixel lineup has seasonal class action lawsuits over build issues, and now they automatically opt you into non-arbitration agreements whenever you activate a new Google phone.
Personally, I’m willing to take the risk because, in my experience, stock android is just so much better than iOS (and other android flavors). But therein lies the issue - android could compete with iPhone just fine, but android manufacturers can’t (or won’t) compete with apple’s relentless pursuit of build quality and software polish. Another damning aspect of this is that Google is supposed to be the best software company in the world, yet they’ve taken more than a decade to figure out messaging - something apple figured out back in ~2010. Android doesn’t deserve to claw back market share in the US until their phones are actually better per $ than the iPhone.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
As somebody who has professionally done software for Android (and iOS and a lot of other things all the way back to very early dynamic websites with CGI-script backends) I would say that the biggest enemy of Android is the increasing bloat of each new version of the framework as it was not designed well to begin with, has “evolved” by layering stuff on top of stuff and has had multiple changes in the way it’s supposed to be used (in the professional lingo, “at the technical architeture level”) so it’s been a bloated mess for a while.
The result is a slower OS which uses more memory and storage and ditto for apps made for it, and they’ve even managed to fragment the developer community (by adding a 2nd programming language, for no reason other than to copy Apple in doing so) and frankly I see no sign at all that the bloatware-framework trend will stop, much less reverse (my - granted, limited - experience with Google Technical Architects is that they’re not really qualified at that level)
No you have it wrong, we just haven’t implement clean architecture with usecases, it’ll be different this time I swear, just wait until Google IO…
At work it was like… Most software developers had android devices, and then business and management had iPhones.
It’s literally a poor financial decision to get an iPhone in the US. Flagship pricing on Android phones in the US is so fucking low you can get an S23 for like $300 on a $20 4 month contract.
_Oh no! Android only made trillions of dollars last year! How oh how will it ever survive!?!!?!_
Am I really supposed to take an opinion like that seriously?
