[marvel_boy]

"Anecdotally, one of the most frequently cited reasons among iPhone users for staying with iOS is that they love the “blue bubbles.”

No way. I don't use iMessage (instead I use Whatsup) but I dont consider Android. I have a Motorola G3 also (work) but the Os is confusing, slow and crash frequently.

[josephmx]

That's a big flaw with Android, people make unfair comparisons because the average Android phone is cheap. Using your example:

Motorola G3 (July 2015, £150 currently on Amazon)

iPhone 6s (September 2015, £497 currently on Amazon)

Obviously a device costing more than 3X as much is going to perform better, eg my S6 (£355, also 2015) almost never crashes and is fast.

[IkmoIkmo]

Yeah, cmon...

Text messages sent per day peaked in 2011 and have declined ever since, we're now half a decade later.

In fact just last month we heard FB and Whatsapp process 60 billion daily messages and growing, SMS 20 billion and dropping. Further, a decent chunk of those SMS messages are from feature phones, i.e. on an iPhone the SMS to IM ratio is more significant than 1:3 and again, growing.

Early on, especially for families, iMessage was somewhat of a big deal. But today and into the future? My whole family is on Whatsapp, from age 10 to age 70 and we all have each others' numbers. We exchange text, videos, voice recording, pictures, there's absolutely zero draw from iMessage. I use SMS exclusively for things like 2FA.

[blackoil]

Most SMS, I receive right now are promotional messages or transactional messages from bank, airlines etc. Friend and Family have stopped sending SMS for a while now.

[Oletros]

The OS slow and crash frequently?

[vetinari]

Didn't you know? Windows on circa 2009 Atom netbook is also slow and crashes frequently, therefore Windows is a bad, slow, crashy OS.

(Tongue in cheek, obviously).

[pawadu]

incidentally, I know a best selling author who wrote his two first books on a 2009 atom netbook.

(conclusion: stop blaming the tools and get back to work)