Big tech companies have their own strategies to keep users entertained, happy, safe, and in the case of Apple, also keeping users locked-in.
Android users have long wanted an iMessage app to use the popular messaging service on non-Apple devices. Apple has never given non-Apple users the chance to use the messaging service, and many people have wondered why. Speculations after speculations, it is finally known why Apple is so strict about this.
And its reasons came as the company is battling Epic Games, the Fortnite maker.
In filed documents, as noted by 9to5Mac and discussed on Reddit, Epic’s lawyers asked Apple executives about iMessage for Android during depositions.
In one quote dating back to 2013, Eddy Cue, who is at this time Apple’s senior vice president for internet software and services, said that Apple “could have made a version [of iMessage] on Android that worked with iOS,” providing the possibility that “users of both platforms would have been able to exchange messages with one another seamlessly.”
Craig Federighi, said that “iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove [an] obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones.” This statement was also shared by Phil Schiller, who was in charge of overseeing Apple’s App Store at the time.
In other words, Apple could make a cross-platform version of iMessage for Android phones if it wanted to. But it didn't, and won't because that would be bad for business.
This statement from Apple executives suggest that making iMessage cross-platformed, would essentially make it too easy for iPhone owners to leave the Apple ecosystem. If Apple ever let that happen, Apple would experience a needlessly fragmented messaging ecosystem, that would leave it vulnerable to other cross-platformed messaging apps in the competition.
Apple knows that iMessage is the big barrier to people switching to Android (particularly in the U.S.), which is why the service has never appeared on competing platforms.
The mindset has been around and known within Apple for quite some times.
In 2016 for example, a comment from a former Apple employee stated that “the #1 most difficult [reason] to leave the Apple universe app is iMessage [...] iMessage amounts to serious lock-in.”
Schiller affirmed the comment by saying that “moving iMessage to Android will hurt us more than help us, this email illustrates why.”
With this information, Epic argues that Apple consciously tries to lock customers into its ecosystem of devices, and that iMessage is one of the key services helping it with that goal.
Epic cited the comments made by the three Apple executives to support its argument, in order to force Apple to defend kicking its Fortnite app off the iOS App Store.
Epic is trying to attack Apple from every direction it can, and is making the antitrust lawsuit bigger, in an attempt to also make this the most significant legal challenge Apple has faced since the Xerox days.
Read: Fortnite Has Been Kicked Out From Apple's App Store And Google Play Store
Apple's iMessage is an instant messaging service, launched in 2011, designed to be exclusive to only Apple platforms.
It boasts features, like text messaging, images, videos and documents sharing, read receipt, end-to-end encryption, location sharing, stickers and more.
Unlike other third-party messaging apps for Apple, the iMessage makes use of a protocol that is based on the Apple Push Notification service (APNs). This proprietary, binary protocol, allows iMessage to have a Keep-Alive connection with the Apple servers, and have data that flows through it encrypted with TLS using a client-side certificate.
Many developers have attempted to create iMessage support for platforms other than Apple, but all of them have yet to become fruitful.
In the modern days of the internet and mobile, Apple decides to keep iMessage to its own and no other, in other to benefit its business.
According to CourtListener, a legal search engine website, the document said that "Apple has recognized the power that iMessage has to attract and keep users within its ecosystem."
This is unlike BlackBerry who once had a proprietary and exclusive messaging app called BBM, but decided to make it cross-platformed.