[not_a_real_56]

There is a flaw with your thinking. Any given year there are only 5-6 iPhones to choose from, where there are plenty of Android phones. This leads to "top phone sold" being iPhones because it is 5 phones against hundreds of Android phones that people get to choose from.

You should instead look at Market share. https://www.statista.com/statistics/272698/global-market-sha...

[browningstreet]

Actually my point was companies-responsible-for-encryption development. You could argue it’s Google vs Apple on this front, but it could also be Apple vs Samsung, or Apple vs any of the other top tier android implementations.

So you can either say Apple is reserving this development for a subset of the market, or Google is withholding it from a massive portion of the market share.

[danShumway]

Samsung is not the reason why iMessages can't be sent to Android users or to Windows devices. Samsung does not decide which platforms Apple will and won't support.

Coordination with even Google would not be necessary for Apple to offer encrypted conversations with users on other devices. There's no rule saying they need to use an open standard or a Google standard or be cross-compatible with another app. It's not that Apple is trying desperately to get iMessage onto other phones and failing because Google and Samsung just won't let them do it.

Of course, Google has its own problems[0]. But the inability to use the Messages app to communicate securely with Android users[1], is solely 100% Apple's decision. Apple does not need to ask permission or coordinate with any other company to increase that security, they would just need to throw a messaging app up on the app store.

Heck, they wouldn't need to support iMessage on Android. They could throw a messaging app up that had no encryption other than that it worked over HTTPS and data instead of SMS when messaging iOS users, changed nothing about the capabilities or features that they supported for non-iMessage users, and even only doing that -- if Android users could download it and set it as their default SMS client on Android then iPhone security would be better.

----

As a comparison here, if Signal dropped support for iOS tomorrow, would you blame Apple for not building support for Signal into iOS? No, that would be absurd to suggest. No one would claim that Apple had some obligation to support the Signal protocol or make Signal compatible with iMessage, or to build an open protocol -- we would all correctly point out that Signal decides where to make its app available. The same is true of Apple. The fact that you literally can't make many Messages conversations secure without completely abandoning the app and using a separate 3rd-party service for those conversations -- it is purely and entirely the result of a decision that Apple has made.

----

[0]: And in fact their proprietary encryption standard is no better than Apple's and they're pulling the exact same crap as Apple is for the same flimsy reasons.

[1]: Note that I don't say non-Apple users, you can have an iMessages account through other devices and you still won't be able to use it with an Android phone number.

[throw0101c]

> Any given year there are only 5-6 iPhones to choose from, where there are plenty of Android phones.

There is such a thing as 'too much' choice:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overchoice

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_fatigue

* https://www.behavioraleconomics.com/resources/mini-encyclope...

* https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/choice-overload-bias

[timeon]

Yes but point here is that in the end there are more Android phones in the world than iPhones. So 'best selling phone' is not relevant in context of this thread.

[Terretta]

> you should instead look at Market share.

Unless your goal is to make money on the platform, then you should look at wallet share, not market share.

[danShumway]

The goal isn't to make money or calculate wallet share. The goal is to send encrypted messages to contacts.

You should look at the percentage of smartphone owners. It does not matter in the slightest how many dollars they have in their pockets. The question is: is the average user going to have a significant number of Android contacts, with which Messages requires plain-text communication to contact.

And the answer for most people is: undoubtedly yes. I would say that most people who are using Messages as their primary messenger for all of their contacts are sending unencrypted messages on the regular.

[Terretta]

Completely fair, I had shifted topics from phone owners, to platform relevance to makers on HN.

Your point stands.