25% of the entire population is a pretty popular application! Not “hardly anyone”. Also, I’d like to know the volume of messages shared, I have WhatsApp, but wouldn’t miss it it it disappeared. iMessage disappearing would be very inconvenient.

I'm surprised it's even 25% in the UK, and I wonder how that's measured. Maybe the 25% includes things like "opening the iMessage app to read SMS messages sent by two-factor authentication services" etc.

I’m not surprised, SMSing people is still common, and sliding from that to iMessage is totally frictionless for iPhone users. With iOS market share being around 50%, I’m surprised (skeptical even!) that it’s not closer to 50%.

But who is that 25%? iPhone users have money. I’m sure there is some significant overlap between iMessage and WhatsApp users (I know I and everyone I know use(s) both). But if you threaten politicians with losing their blue bubbles they’re gonna fall in line.

No one in Europe cares about the blue bubbles.

I prefer iMessage over the other messengers, but I still haven’t met anyone who cares. A lot of people don’t even know why the bubbles are sometimes green.

Yet, the EU have their panties in a knot about having it be interoperable…

> But if you threaten politicians with losing their blue bubbles they’re gonna fall in line.

This is not a thing outside the United States, and I doubt that most British politicians are even aware of 'blue bubbles'.

For example, the recent controversy regarding the release of Covid-related government communications was centred on WhatsApp, with no reference to other platforms like iMessage.

https://news.sky.com/story/politicians-are-drawn-to-whatsapp...