(unpaywalled version on archive.today: https://archive.ph/03cwZ)
Interesting figure that comes out of the article: 87% of US teens prefer iPhones. Also the explanations given aren’t quite surprising, I guess it’s mostly because of iMessage. Teens will feel like outcasts if they get an Android phone while their friends still use iMessage because of the green bubbles.
It’s actually hilarious how we allowed consumerism to take us this far and that we have now peer pressure over smartphones.
“You’re telling me in 2023, you still have a ’Droid? […] You gotta be at least 50 years old.”
ouch 😔
This has to be a US thing, in Switzerland there is not a single person I communicate with using iMessage. It’s WhatsApp or Signal.
That’s because your mobile plans are usually different and you get charged for each SMS, while SMS is typically included for free in mobile plans in the US. Since you have to pay per SMS, people instead use WhatsApp and Signal which don’t have a per message charge.
That’s a thing of the past. Nowadays, in Switzerland you get everything unlimited for 20 a month.
In the past, messages cost 10 cents on a prepaid plan, so people started using WhatsApp for free messages at some point, and it just kind of… Stayed