Apple’s developer conference kicks off next week in San Francisco, and while we won’t be there, there is some interesting news today about what may come from that event: Yes, Apple is predicted to bring iMessage to Android.
iMessage, if you didn’t know, is Apple’s fairly omnipresent messaging platform which — at the moment — allows iOS users to communicate via text and multimedia messages as easily as sending SMS. There’s no user names, no signing up for an additional service. In fact, it works on the same premise which Google’s Allo has much more recently adopted — it should be largely seamless and invisible to the end-user.
Making iMessage available to Android would be kind of a big thing. iMessage offers a number of benefits, not the least of which is neutralising SMS and MMS costs (though for most of us in Australia, these aren’t separately charged). End-to-end encryption is another feature, though this is less a point of difference these days, as other cross-platform messaging solutions like WhatsApp, Telegram and others support this too.
It’s not something we think all Android users will want or even use, but for those who regularly communicate with iOS users, it might be quite a good thing. It might be a case of a bit too little a bit too late, but undoubtedly if Apple does make this move, there will be some happy Android users out there.
MacDailyNews reported this based on a single source, and we’re only using their information, so this is squarely in the rumour pile for the time being.
