Messaging…blue v green bubbles
the colour matters you know!
Until a few months ago, I’ll admit, I was blissfully unaware that this was even a thing. The colour of the message bubble on your phone, it transpires, matters! There is kudos to blue!
Where did it all start
Actually, and possibly even sadly, I remember when and exactly where I was when my very first message ever came through. It was the late 90’s and from an acquaintance in Wales. How about that, I actually do recall see! It was on a flip phone — a Nokia I think, but don’t quote me.
Back then it was all SMS (Short Messaging Service). The infancy service was attached to your mobile number. It was the start of something big, we simply didn’t know it back then though. With SMS you were restricted to tiny, 160 byte messages, but it sufficed our innocent, early millennial needs. Long messages at that time had to be split and sent over two or even three messages — remember?
As consumer demand grew, MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) was launched upon us. Suddenly pictures could be attached and the size of the messages grew up to a 600 byte limit.
iPhone changed the rules
This year, we have just celebrated the 15th anniversary of iPhone. Apple, being Apple quickly decided to have their very own piece of the messaging pie and gave us the Instant Messaging Service (iMessage). It heralded all sorts of changes such as yet another bump in file size, now up to 100mb as it was internet based, inline replies became a thing, as too did read receipts, and possibly most crucially for Apple, these messages were end-to-end encrypted. This meant no one other than the recipient can read them; not even Apple. So even if someone tries to have access to your iMessages by force it is impossible without your passcode.
This was a perfect storm from Apples standpoint. It was a service they created, hosted on their servers made only for their devices, be it Mac, iPhone, Apple Watch or iPad. And so the bubble war began. Green meant you paid the carrier for your messages and Apples blue denoted it was free over the internet.
Folks hate change
By nature, we are inherently lazy and not much up for change. On our devices we tend to stick to the default music player, browser and of course messaging app too. Yes, there are a number of other messaging apps about, but we love the convenience of the app shipped with our device.
If, as an iPhone user you message an Android user, you’ll know straight away as the message bubble is green and not blue. Of course, it doesn’t stop there. You can’t send videos, create a group chat, add people to or create group chats and there are no inline read receipts or typing now awareness dots.
The dominance of iPhone is prevalent most in The States. What percentage of 18–24 year olds, the most influential and critical demographic in this particular space, do you think use iPhone? A healthy share would be what, 25%? 35% even. Well, that figure is an astonishing 74%. Meaning that 26% are ostracised and even bullied for not being iPhone and iMessage users and can’t receive iMessage. Even Tinder users get less replies if they have ‘green bubbles’. How crazy is that? An astonishing 200,000 iMessage are sent every second and Apple, unsurprisingly, are in no rush to share this platform. Why would they be? iMessage has for a very long time been their ‘lock-in’ to the fabled Apple Eco-System. Because it works so well across all your devices and with family and friends, it proves to be one of the biggest deterrents to being tempted away from iPhone.
The other choices
The States is somewhat unique in that they really do not entertain in the slightest, other messaging apps. Sure, the biggest problem is not only in you downloading and installing the new app, but of course to make it viable, your family and friends will need it on their devices too, and as we’ve already mentioned, folks are lazy!
In the UK and much of Europe, WhatsApp has become hugely popular with 200 billion monthly users. Another major player is Messenger with 1.3 billion monthly users. Telegram and Snapchat are in the mix too. Google have tried to throw their hat in the messaging ring on many, many occasions with Google Hangouts, Google Allo and Google Voice for example.
But, just for one moment let’s assume that one company did have the golden ticket and created to perfect cross-platform service that the whole world used. Would that be a healthy position? Probably not.
Something new is on the horizon
RCS is just around the corner. Rich Communications Service. It has it all….large file support, read receipts, the ability for group chats, inline replies and I believe it’s even encrypted as well. It ships on every new phone, right now, baked in to the OS and ready to use. Every phone that is, except, yup, you guessed it….iPhone. Apple could ever so easily add this to their messaging app which would suddenly mean you could message Android users as if on iMessage. Messages could so easily, right now be sent as RCS rather than SMS. But why would they want that functionality? They want you to stay loyal to their products and not be lured away from their eco-system in any way at all.
The future
Well RCS is a thing — it’s not going anywhere and non-iPhone users can benefit from it right now. But, will it ever come close to rivalling that blue bubble kudos I mentioned earlier showing to the world that you are an iPhone user.
The future of messaging looks interesting for sure, but my bet is Apple will sleep pretty easy at night for a good few years to come yet.
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