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Americans use traditional SMS messages to text each other, instead of Whatsapp like everyone else. When you text another iPhone from your iPhone, it actually uses a different app called iMessage that doesn’t cost money and the text appears in a blue bubble. If you text an Android user from an iPhone, the text appears in a green bubble and costs money (or consumes a bit of your plan, or whatever).
LOL i love the way you phrased this. As an Expat American it's incredibly annoying that my home country is still stuck on SMS messaging, and they just take that as a default ("texting") to where it's hard to even describe anything else to my friends back home.
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European countries do often have cheaper data than the US, but that's not the main reason why Americans use iMessage. The main reason is that early smartphone adoption in the US was extremely iPhone centric for anyone (a) under 40 and (b) not-poor. That has only grown more skewed over time. Premium Android phones in the iPhone price range are almost unheard of in the US - especially outside some first-gen immigrants from China/India (who use WeChat/Whatsapp). In Europe a lot of early smartphone adoption was HTC/Samsung/Sony Android devices; it's not uncommon for PMC types to have thousand dollar Samsung Galaxy whatever phones, although the trend is still toward iPhone in the long term. Not a single one of my American coworkers has an Android, ever.
This means that in a work group or social environment in the US for middle-class and above people, setting up a chat on iMessage is always an option, whereas in Europe even if 3/5 or 8/10 people use iPhone, you still use Whatsapp to include the others.
I don't think so. The nicer Samsung phones (S and Note) are fairly popular. At least among the people I know.
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That seems overstated. If you walk into any carrier store, at least half the shelf space is usually for higher end Samsung, Motorola, Google, or even OnePlus devices. Maybe it's because I'm in the midwest, but Android easily outnumbers iPhone among my friends and family.
iPhone has 80% marketshare among 18-24 year olds in the US, and well in excess of 80% marketshare among high income millennials too. Phone retailers (including carriers) love Android because they make more margin on their phones (a deal Samsung etc readily agree to in exchange for store space). For reference, after the iPhone X (2017), Apple cut margins for resellers (which obviously include carriers) to sub-4% in many cases. Samsung resellers make more like 6-7%, so it's a huge difference for the retailer if you sell 10,000 $1000 iPhones vs 10,000 $1000 Samsungs.
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