“Messaging apps dominate the top charts of the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store. Despite there being dozens of different apps in the category, many of them have managed to garner millions of users,” AFTVnews reports. “It appears as though Amazon wants a piece of the action and is working on their own stand-alone messaging app called Anytime.”
“Amazon has begun surveying customers about a new messaging service to gauge which features are most important to users,” AFTVnews reports. “It’s unclear how far along the new service is, but one customer said the survey seemed to imply it was a ready product.”
“Based on the images I’ve been provided, Anytime by Amazon seems to be an all-in-one feature rich service that could even rival social networks,” AFTVnews reports. “The focus seems to be messaging, including voice and video calls, but there’s also mention of photo sharing with @mentions, as well as filters for photos and video with “special effects and masks.” Anytime will also provide tasks that can be done in groups, like playing games, listening to music, and ordering food.”
“As is to be expected, Anytime by Amazon would work across both desktop and mobile devices, including both Android and iPhone,” AFTVnews reports. “There’s no indication how far along the service is or when we could expect it to launch.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Amazon’s materials claim: “Works everywhere. Chat seamlessly across desktop and mobile, iPhone or Android.”
If successful – big IF, as messaging apps need critical mass for success – Amazon’s entry could finally force the release of Apple’s Message for Android.
SEE ALSO:
Messages and five other apps Apple really needs to make for Android – March 15, 2017
Why Apple’s holding back Messages for Android: Hardware sales – June 15, 2016
Apple’s new iMessage is great, but why the hell isn’t it on Android, yet? – June 14, 2016
Apple’s iMessage and Siri will allow iOS 10 users to send money via Square Cash – June 13, 2016
Apple to deliver iMessage to Android at WWDC – June 9, 2016
Why doesn’t Apple do a Facebook service?
I know, put Eddy Cue on the Facebook project insuring that Apple’s version of Facebook would get out before the end of the year.
Apple already uses Amazon Web Services for iCloud, adding such a service would demand a massive expansion of capacity Apple simply does not have. Should Apple do something like that, they would be dependent upon AWS for the servers and know how and it would all be running on Windows or LINUX servers.
A Facebook-like service would be antithetical to Apple’s commitment to user privacy.
And still apple took the unnecessary effort to bake fb and twit into ios. These apps are integrated and the controls cannot be deleted by the user.
But wait, there is more. Google search is still an option in iOS. Apple cares so much about your privacy that it created iBeacon to track you and iAd to annoy you.
Then Apple stores all you iCloud data on AWS, Azure, and Google servers with the promise that it is unhackable and no bad operative within Apple could possibly misuse your data. Except Apple’s user agreement doesn’t actually guarantee any of that, you are just supposed to blindly trust cook & the boyz.
When Apple guarantees security and privacy in writing, then we can trust them. As a profit seeking corporation, however, you should know that given the choice between making a buck and enabling you to have complete control of your data, you will be marginalized immediately. Apple may be the least of the evils currently, but they are less secure than Blackberry used to be in their heyday and this isn’t Jobs Apple anymore.
These are imaginary problems. Yes, FB and Twitter are integrated into iOS. But you can simply choose not to sign into them.
iBeacons only work within a few feet of the beacon and is meant to help people find things in a large retail store. Hardly a data collection on the scale of, say, the NSA. I think it’s time to take off the tin-foil hat.
Saying iAds were created to annoy you is like saying the same thing about TV commercials. They were created for the company displaying the ad to make money. Most apps with built-in ads have an option to pay a couple bucks to disable the ads. Seems pretty reasonable to me.
Cue ain’t all bad; He pushed for a larger iPhone early on when his colleagues said getout’ahere.
Amazon has lots of moving parts.
They have also filed for a Meal Kits trademark with the tag “We do the prep. You be the chef.”. Blue Apron shares are tanking.
When Whole Foods is swallows up Amazon will have stores (which are essentially warehouses) in just about every upscale zip code in America. Alexa will be able to order your dinner or groceries and Siri will be able to do exactly what.
Siri can find some things on the web for you about “Siri will be able to do exactly what”
Time has come for Messages to go cross platform. iTunes did it and ultimately strengthened Apple. Facebook’s WhatsApp already dominates and Apple will need to change to remain relevant.
Apple promised open Facetime when they debuted it, then reneged.
Messages is nothing special. I do not understand why anybody cares.
Similar to WeChat in China, I could see Amazon’s messaging service using Amazon gift card balances as a means of moving money between users. This will only work due to the huge number of Amazon customer accounts that span the majority of OS platforms.
As I posted at a later article about same…
Amazon ALREADY pushed out a messaging app. It’s received minimal attention, which is why no one here has heard of it. It’s called Chime. You can read about it and get inundated with its hyperactive marketing spiel here:
https://chime.aws
https://chime.aws/pricing/
You get 30 days free before pestering to buy subscription plan for Plus ($2.50/mth) or Pro ($15/mth) versions. The Pro version appears to be aimed at businesses that would like to conference from 3 to 100 people at a time with messaging, voice, video, white board and perks.
So what’s this ‘Anytime’ thingy? It’s stripped down to only do messaging. If Amazon buy Slack (which I hope they don’t as I see zero fit or competence!), ‘Anytime’ would probably be redundant and dumped or altered to fit into the Slack functionality. We shall see.
My general opinion is a *yawn*. But it can’t hurt Amazon to try. Competition is the father of innovation…