The whole point is to be about your social circle. If 90% of my social circle is on iPhone, they're on iMessage.

What the rest of the world outside of my social circle does isn't really relevant to my conversations inside my social circle.

I've run up against this reality multiple times. I personally prefer signal & whatsapp for group chats than iMessage. If only because I can mute them and not get an annoying red bubble telling me about the hundreds of messages I'm trying to not react to in real time when I'm busy.

If you tap on the info button in Messages, you can click "Hide Alerts", which works fine for me.

That doesn't stop the red counter bubble from appearing and incrementing on the messages app, sadly.

Whereas a muted group chat in whatsapp is completely muted, unless someone explicitly @tags you in a message or explicitly replies to your message (another feature iMessage group chats lacks - tagging specific people, and explicit/contextual replies to specific messages)

Swipe a conversation in Messages and tap Hide Alerts.

But it is precisely my social circle that matters when choosing a messaging platform.

> 85%+ of the world's on Android

I'm assuming the majority seems to be third-world countries because in big UK cities the majority of the phones I see around are iPhones.

The UK seems to be about 50% iOS.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/271240/android-market-sh...

And yet everybody seems to use WhatsApp even between iOS devices