• last month
Transcript
00:00All right, so imagine this,
00:01you're creating a new startup smartphone company.
00:04Your goal, of course, is to make it huge, right?
00:07So you make your first phone, you launch with a bang,
00:10you've got a bunch of enthusiasts on board
00:12and you're slowly starting to grow this thing.
00:13And it starts going well in Europe and in India
00:17and a few other Asian markets,
00:19and things are starting to grow and go quite nicely.
00:23But you notice there's not a lot of pickup
00:25in the United States for some reason.
00:27Now, there's a few reasons why this might be.
00:30I mean, a lot of people already know
00:31there's a surprisingly high amount of people
00:33who just walk into a carrier store
00:35to buy their phones in the US.
00:37So if you don't have a deal with a carrier,
00:40then things might not go well for you there.
00:42And this is a enthusiast only thing,
00:44they're selling them online, so that's understandable.
00:47But then you get to the stats.
00:50And the stats say the iPhone
00:53has somewhere around 50% market share in the US,
00:57which is higher than the global average.
00:58And it is steadily growing every single year.
01:02And worst of all, 87%, that's not a typo,
01:0687% of teenagers in the US have an iPhone.
01:10And that, that honestly feels like the most damning one
01:14because that means they got them early.
01:16Like these are the, everyone knows about the walls
01:18that Apple builds up around their ecosystem
01:19to try to keep people in the iPhone walled garden.
01:23But 87% of teenagers,
01:26that just means that there's a lot
01:27of these people's first phone.
01:28These people will be iPhone customers for life, maybe.
01:32Like for a lot of them, their friends all have iPhones.
01:34And if they're gonna get their first phone
01:36for the first time,
01:37they don't really even consider anything
01:39that isn't also an iPhone.
01:41It's the only way to get into all the group chats
01:42with their friends.
01:43It's the only way to get in on all the inside jokes
01:45and socializations that happen after school
01:48from the FaceTimes to the iMessages
01:50and all the things that are just iPhone only.
01:52So it's a very baked in thing.
01:55It's a very US centric thing for sure,
01:58but it is everywhere.
01:59So this is why when I made that blue bubbles
02:01versus green bubbles explained video,
02:03I had to put that disclaimer in the beginning of the video,
02:04but that's why half the comments were like,
02:06yeah, I live in the US and I see this everywhere.
02:09There's iPhones everywhere.
02:10And the pressure of the iPhone is very real.
02:13And then the other half of the comments are like,
02:15this is the dumbest thing I've ever seen.
02:18Why do people care so much about which phone people use?
02:21Just use WhatsApp.
02:22It's super easy.
02:23And so that's why that dichotomy exists.
02:25But you get the idea.
02:26So you are that smartphone company.
02:28You're in this position.
02:29You're trying to break out in the US.
02:31What do you do?
02:33It's a real question.
02:34And as some of you may have picked up
02:37by the title and premise of this video,
02:39it's a real company too.
02:41It's nothing.
02:42This is a company that's made their first two phones now.
02:44They've got some accessories.
02:45They're trying to break out.
02:47And their options seem to be just give up on the US
02:52or maybe try to strike a carrier deal and get in that way.
02:54But it doesn't seem like it might work.
02:57Or just lean all the way in
03:00and embrace the actual heart of the question,
03:04the number one problem,
03:05the biggest asset of the other side.
03:08And that's what they're doing.
03:09So what Nothing has decided to do,
03:11and they're announcing this today,
03:12is they have built iMessage into their Android phone.
03:20Kinda.
03:22So they've announced a new app that is gonna come out
03:23and be exclusive to the Nothing Phone 2 to start.
03:27And it's called the Nothing Chats app.
03:30And their goal with this is to literally offer iMessage
03:34also on their phone.
03:36Now, how does this work?
03:37You might be asking.
03:39Great question.
03:39Glad you asked.
03:40So I've got it here.
03:41This is an app that's co-developed
03:42with a company called Sunbird,
03:43who has been doing this for a little while
03:45in a restricted beta.
03:46You might've heard of it.
03:47And there's also a couple of others
03:48floating around like this.
03:50And basically what it does
03:51is it lets you sign into it using an Apple ID.
03:53So you can just sign up for an Apple account
03:55without any Apple products.
03:56You sign up for an Apple ID,
03:58and then you sign into the app,
03:59and it will give you as many iMessage features as possible
04:03without actually having an iPhone.
04:05So, okay, a couple of things about this.
04:07One, this Nothing Chats app,
04:09when you first sign in, is pretty intuitive.
04:12You go through the setup process
04:13to create a Nothing account,
04:15and then connect your Apple ID.
04:18So like I said, you can make an Apple ID
04:20even if you have no Apple products.
04:22And then you sign in,
04:23and then everything just seems to work fine.
04:25It's more or less looking exactly like a skinned version
04:29of the Sunbird beta app.
04:30And so sure enough, when you go to message an iPhone
04:33or join any group chat that has a bunch of iPhones in it,
04:36things that would not work with an Android phone before,
04:40it basically starts off by sending through
04:42a virtual contact card,
04:43asking to merge your contact info
04:45with your Apple ID email address.
04:47And then suddenly it all works,
04:48and you're a blue bubble,
04:49and you're texting people with iMessage
04:51from your Android phone.
04:53Also, high quality media is working.
04:55So you might've heard of this issue already.
04:57This is actually one of my biggest annoyances,
04:58but when you message an iPhone with an Android phone
05:01or vice versa, and you send like a video or a photo,
05:04it's like super blurry because it's been compressed a lot
05:07to fit in the file size limits of MMS.
05:10But now you actually get that full resolution photo
05:12and video treatment
05:13as if you're just two iPhones talking to each other,
05:15which is actually very convenient.
05:18Typing indicators work when another person
05:20has been typing for a while.
05:21And they're also working on the reactions as well.
05:23It's not in this beta that I've been testing,
05:24but they say they're gonna have that
05:26around the end of this year.
05:27But then number two,
05:28they're saying that they're launching this
05:30as an exclusive app for the Nothing Phone 2,
05:33so just this phone,
05:34and I imagine future Nothing Phones as well,
05:37to sort of give people that option
05:40where if they were gonna buy a new phone
05:42and they really wanna be in the iMessage group chats
05:45and all the iMessage features,
05:47and they could only buy an iPhone,
05:49they'll at least also have this phone as an option.
05:52But then three, this is the big one,
05:54and I cannot stress this enough,
05:57this could lead to enormous security issues.
06:02Signing in with your Apple ID onto a device
06:05that you don't own is an enormous security issue
06:09and it's a huge risk to anyone using it.
06:11Same thing is also true about Beeper and the others.
06:13Because the way this one works,
06:14and I've confirmed this with Nothing,
06:15is when you sign in with an Apple ID,
06:18it's literally signing in on some Mac mini
06:22in a server farm somewhere,
06:23and that Mac mini will then do all of the routing for you
06:26to make this happen.
06:27You will never see or actually hold or use that Mac mini.
06:32Now, no one else is supposed to be able to use
06:36or see that Mac mini or your messages on it
06:39because it's all encrypted,
06:40but you are still logging in with your own Apple ID
06:43on someone else's computer.
06:45I don't know how else to put that,
06:46like that on its face is a big enough risk
06:48that many people will never even wanna try this.
06:50But hey, if you're Nothing,
06:52well, maybe this is just enough to be able to say,
06:56hey, we're offering iMessage on an Android phone.
06:59Like this is a young and crazy enough company
07:01that they're gonna try stuff like this.
07:04So maybe people will consider a Nothing phone in the US
07:06instead of an iPhone
07:08that everyone seems to just choose by default.
07:10I actually talked to Nothing about this
07:12as I was testing it before this is all going live,
07:15and I actually asked Carl Pei straight up,
07:17what do you think Apple is going to do or say about this
07:21once they find out about it?
07:23Because as this video goes live,
07:26Apple's finding out about this.
07:28And his answer was, honestly, probably nothing.
07:33But just because there's a weird timeline
07:35we're living in here in 2023,
07:37where Apple kind of can't really retaliate publicly
07:39because they've already been up against
07:41so much antitrust pressure.
07:43Everyone already knows Apple is using iMessage
07:46and its powers to keep people from leaving the iPhone.
07:49But if Apple now like publicly acknowledges this
07:51as a competitor in the space
07:53that they've got to shut down or something like that,
07:55it could sort of shine a light on it
07:56in a way they don't actually want.
07:59So they'll probably just quietly sweep it under the rug
08:02and maybe just point out some security risks
08:05involved with the whole thing.
08:06But then of course, the other side of the coin is
08:08if Apple cares so much about security,
08:10then wouldn't they wanna support RCS
08:12so that the millions of messages that go back and forth
08:14between Android phones and iPhones every day
08:17won't be unencrypted SMS?
08:19But that's another story for another day.
08:22But at the end of the day, the real question is,
08:24will it work?
08:25Will this strategy of offering some iMessage stuff
08:30on their phone exclusively actually work
08:33for nothing to break out in the US?
08:35And the fact is there's a non-zero number of people
08:38who will be willing to try this
08:40to give themselves the iMessage, the blue bubble life
08:44while still using a different phone.
08:46There's probably somebody out there who's like,
08:47I might buy a nothing phone,
08:48but also all my friends have iPhones, so I guess I can't.
08:51And for them, this is real, it's great.
08:54But there's a lot of baggage with that
08:56and sort of a weird timeline we're living in now
08:59that this is actually a possible thing that could happen.
09:02Let me know what your thoughts are
09:03in the comment section below if you think this will work.
09:06Thanks for watching.
09:08Catch you guys in the next one.
09:09Peace.
09:10Bye.