I don't really use Apple products, but I do have lots of friends/family that I can't convince to use anything other than iMessage to chat on their phone. I'd literally be the only contact they'd bother talking to not on iMessage. So right now, our experience sending pictures/videos is pretty terrible. I'd install iMessage on my Android device in a heartbeat if it meant I could actually send decently sized photos and videos to them. Doubly so if it meant I could actually participate in their Facetime calls and they could easily Facetime me.
1. Are committed to only using Android phones (i.e. can't be convinced to get an iPhone).
2. Communicate (or are forced to communicate) over the default messaging experience with primarily iPhone users (remembering that the iMessage / SMS default is mostly just a U.S.-centric thing and cuts out most of the rest of the world).
3. Are willing and able to download a third-party messaging app to address this specific use-case.
1. Android Users
2. Probably in the US
3. Who communicate with iPhone users
4. Are willing to download chat apps
Do you think this is an incredibly rare group of people? Android has ~40% market share in the US, so there's a lot of Android users out there. It seems extremely likely for an Android user to have some iPhone users they communicate with. And at least in my experiences, people with Android devices are generally willing to install 3rd party chat apps given how terrible Google has been with really making a solid single chat platform for Android. The kind of people who aren't willing to install some chat app are more likely to be iPhone users, given the default chat options on Android are highly fragmented you pretty much need a third-party app to have a decent chat experience.
1. They're proud of the fact that they're not a "blue-bubble Apple sheep" and would find downloading Apple's messaging app as an admission of defeat.
2. They literally just do not care in any way whatsoever and just use whatever the default client is (e.g. grandparents).
I'm entirely willing to admit this may not be representative, however.
I think it wouldn't be like >50% of Android users using it or anything, but I imagine there's a lot of people similar to me in this case.
Absolutely yes. Apple could also make the Android iMessage app fall back to SMS (IIRC the Android FB Messenger app does something similar) if the user wasn’t on iMessage if they wanted to.
It obviously isn't in Apple's business interest. Regulations primarily exist to force companies to work in the consumers interest even if it's against their business interest. If every regulation was in line with business best interest there wouldn't be any point making them.
Well, if secure communications is what they're customer base is interested in, it would make sense to provide them a means to use Apple's app to communicate securely with their Android friends.
Even if Apple had jumped on RCS at the same speed as Android did, and assuming that absolutely every SMS user switched over promptly, there's no end-to-end encryption built into that protocol either.
Given the exact thing they're being sued for here, I can't imagine that the approach Google has taken with RCS of "we've built special end-to-end stuff into our first party messaging app that'll work when you're talking to other people using that app" would have helped them. Even if they also made an iMessage app for Android, that doesn't seem to address your complaint. Or no more than "you could use Signal instead" does.
Yes, that's itself an attempt to lock people in, which is particularly absurd considering Apple's privacy branding -- Apple sacrifices the privacy of its users communications with Android users to lock them in.