iMessage for Android would have stifled innovation, says Craig Federighi

Craig Federighi defended the decision to not develop Messages for Android, saying it would never get a mass audience, and had Apple done it, it would have hampered innovation.

Google's recent attempts to shame Apple into adopt a common messaging standard — while not doing so itself — is just the latest salvo in a contentious debate that has lasted a decade. As far back as 2013, Apple was debating bringing its Messages app to Android, but chose not to.

Key to that debate was a series of emails involving, among others, Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi. Federighi's 2013 emails were revealed during the Epic Games v Apple court case, and showed him saying that he thought it "would simply serve to remove an obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones."

Now the Wall Street Journal's Joanna Stern has interviewed Federighi and specifically asked what happened about a Messages app on Android. "I'm not aware of it shipping," he joked.

Apple's Craig Federighi and Greg Joswiak (@gregjoz) join @JoannaStern at #WSJTechLive to discuss products, privacy and power at the tech giant https://t.co/fNo2JGwMB4 https://t.co/aGrTlZrUo4
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) October 26, 2022

"My feeling," he continued, "and I think if one read the whole email [it] was clear, the back and forth with Eddy was if if we're going to enter a market and go down the road of building an application, we have to be in it in a way that's going to make a difference."

"[It would have to be] that we would have a lot of customers, that we would be able to deliver great experiences, but this comes at a real cost," he said. "And my fear was we weren't in a position to do that."

"And so if we just shipped an app that really didn't get critical mass on other platforms," said Federighi, "what it would have accomplished is it would have held us back in innovating and all the ways we wanted to innovate and messages on for our customers. [It] wouldn't really have accomplished much at all in any other way. "

"And so we just felt, you know, pick where you can make a difference, pick where you're going to invest," he continued, "and do it where where you'd make a difference and this seemed like a throwaway that wasn't going to serve the world, honestly."

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19 Comments

haikus 12 comments · 10 Years

About 2 years ago

I know that many people love iMessage. And I know we do prefer using this more privacy-conscious platform than, say, WhatsApp or Telegram.

But iMessage isn’t really the pinnacle of innovation, with features like unsend or edit messages only being available now.

So… mmm… I don’t buy into the “it would have stifled innovation” argument.

bloggerblog 2520 comments · 16 Years

haikus said:

I know that many people love iMessage. And I know we do prefer using this more privacy-conscious platform than, say, WhatsApp or Telegram.
But iMessage isn’t really the pinnacle of innovation, with features like unsend or edit messages only being available now.
So… mmm… I don’t buy into the “it would have stifled innovation” argument.

That’s not what he was talking about, and obviously those features you pointed out are not innovations. Apple can add features like full resolution photo and video sharing as well as things like Memojis and other delightful experiences without having to figure out how that’ll translate or are they even possible in an ecosystem where they have zero control over, aka Android and all its variants. We also don’t know what’s in iMessage’s future roadmap.

lordjohnwhorfin 871 comments · 18 Years

Seems like a very US-centric view of things. As a result, absolutely everybody and their sister in Europe uses WhatsApp for messaging and videocalls, even when they have an iPhone and messaging or calling another iPhone user. Allowing facebook to take over that global mindshare seems like a strategic mistake.

zireael9797 1 comment · 2 Years

muh innovation

auxio 2766 comments · 19 Years

bloggerblog said:

haikus said:

I know that many people love iMessage. And I know we do prefer using this more privacy-conscious platform than, say, WhatsApp or Telegram.
But iMessage isn’t really the pinnacle of innovation, with features like unsend or edit messages only being available now.
So… mmm… I don’t buy into the “it would have stifled innovation” argument.

That’s not what he was talking about, and obviously those features you pointed out are not innovations. Apple can add features like full resolution photo and video sharing as well as things like Memojis and other delightful experiences without having to figure out how that’ll translate or are they even possible in an ecosystem where they have zero control over, aka Android and all its variants. We also don’t know what’s in iMessage’s future roadmap.

Exactly. When I compare the inordinate amount of time I spend fighting bizarre issues with Android Studio (the fact that they have a "Repair IDE" option in the menus says a lot) and debugging quirks on different versions of Android, to the ease of developing for Apple platforms, I lament that I could have spent that time adding new features and making apps better instead of just porting the same features over. Time and resources are the most valuable commodity to tech companies.

If Google wants iMessage so badly, let them spent their time working on it and maintaining it on the half-baked technology stack called Android. That's what Federighi was essentially saying in nicer words. Part of the reason why they still haven't gotten RCS right.