“Apple at CES is making its consumer-related pitch clear, but if it wants to put even more life into its enterprise sales it must make FaceTime and iMessages more compatible with other platforms to support next-generation enterprise communications,” Jonny Evans writes for Computerworld.
“Enterprises speak to their customers, and while enterprises are certainly (and appropriately) adopting Apple’s solutions across their internal infrastructure, they must still communicate with customers who may be using other platforms,” Evans writes. “That’s not easily possible with iMessages and FaceTime.”
“Given that development of Messages apps seems to have been lacklustre at best, mainly consisting of a few games and thousands of weird emoji sticker packs, I can’t help but think Apple could unleash more potential by making its system cross platform compatible,” Evans writes. “Think about Group FaceTime. I’d argue that this is one of the most sophisticated video chat services around, but at present it’s only really useful if you inhabit the Apple universe. That’s a shame, as it could be a powerful collaborative and customer relationship tool if it were made more compatible with other platforms.”
Much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s a computer age-old problem, compatibility or lack thereof and what happens to your hardware sales if you, for example, release Messages for Android, as Apple once considered (and still might)?
SEE ALSO:
Why Apple should release Messages for Android – April 30, 2018
Google’s ‘Chat’ is not end-to-end encrypted like Apple’s iMessage – April 23, 2018
Messages and five other apps Apple really needs to make for Android – March 15, 2017
Why I remain unconvinced when Apple denies plans to introduce iMessage to Android – June 17, 2016
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
imessages in the cloud on a webpage. I think you should be able to sign into iCloud and see your messages and respond, etc. A lot of things should be available that way and cross platform. We just switched from iPhones to Androids because of this exact thing. We run Windows and easier to respond to text messages in the browser and Android allows this now. I was hoping messages in the cloud would bring this feature and didn’t. We need to see maps.apple.com come to life as well among many others!
I think if Apple does it strategically, it can work. Obviously porting services like iMessage, FaceTime, Siri to Android wouldn’t be a great idea since that would undermine the iOS ecosystem but porting them to Windows, which still controls at least 85% of the laptop / desktop market, would work. The vast majority of enterprise customers still use Windows and having tight integration between Windows / iOS can only benefit Apple. It worked with iPod / iTunes
If Windows Phone was actually popular, I would agree porting iMessage and Facetime to Windows would be a bit hit. With Apple still pushing post-PC mobile devices as the ‘future’, failing to port to Android (the huge majority of mobile devices in use) at the same time may make the initiative a non-starter.
Apple can’t do anything right and simply throws away opportunities. Apple makes those powerful A-series ARM processors. They could have been using those processors in high-powered servers to steal market share from Intel-based servers. Almost the entire industry agrees Apple’s A-series processors are the most powerful available, so that’s a huge advantage for Apple.
What is Amazon doing? Using ARM servers to steal market share from Intel-based servers. Apple should have been doing this years ago in order to gain a solid lock in the enterprise market. Apple is using the amazingly powerful A12 in only iPhones and iPads. iPhone sales are rapidly declining and so Apple should move those awesome A12 chips to other products instead of letting them go to waste.
Apple is letting the company’s value collapse without putting up a decent fight. Apple should be filling up its data centers with A12-powered servers of its own design instead of buying servers from outside companies. Apple needs to be serious about starting its own cloud business that would be competitive with AWS or Azure.
Apple’s iPhone business is on the rocks and will likely never recover if Chinese citizens are boycotting them. It’s absolutely disappointing how Apple fell so quickly in prestige and value when it should have been able to do so much better. Someone at Apple needs to stay hungry to keep Apple at the forefront of tech.
It will never happen. Apple can’t even update Macs on an annual basis and their cloud services are terrible.
So many missed opportunities…
I’m not sure Apple’s A-series (which compares well with desktop class Intel processors) would survive in competing with Intel Server/Workstation class processors in their environment.
Apple has iCloud service, but every time wants to expand its hit with 10 lawsuits from companies who don’t want to sell there patients especially to Apple. I guess don’t remember the Molotov’s experience with using chips from Motorola or Intel everybody copies from Apple. Why should they always lead and everybody steals concepts even from old patents.
Well, it may be Karma. Until Apple started patenting everything, the computing industry was relatively comfortable ‘trading’ ideas and using each other as stepping stones to achieve ever higher ideas.