Facebook and Apple have been at war for sometime now. Both the companies have been on the fence on the topic of privacy for months now. Apple’s stringent policies annoy Facebook because it hurts the companies advertising platform.
The social networking giant Facebook relies entirely on advertising for its revenue. On the other hand, Apple’s business completely relies on hardware sales, software sales, and newly growing services. The iPhone maker likes to tout its offerings as the ones that do not affect its users privacy on the internet.
“I assume it’s in Apple’s interest to have everyone using an iPhone; I mean, obviously, it is. And you look at a place like the U.S., most people have an iPhone, and the messaging experience works better on iMessage if everyone else has an iPhone,” said WhatsApp head, at Facebook, Will Cathcart, according to Gadgets Now. “It’s certainly in their strategic interest that people not use something like WhatsApp because they want people not to use an Android phone.”
Facebook continues to argue that it is being treated unfairly on Apple’s platforms. The company representatives have talked at length against the default messaging app on iPhones. All Apple devices such as the iPhone, the iPad, and the Mac ship with iMessage built-in. The latest arguments suggest that Apple’s plan is to not allow users to use Android phones.
“Regardless of whatever the purpose of the labels was, we compete with iMessage from Apple, we compete in the U.S. — where way more people use iMessage than use WhatsApp — we compete in a bunch of places around the world,” added Cathcart. “You don’t see a label for iMessage when you download it because you don’t download it; it’s on your phone, to begin with. And so, we were critical of that.”
