Making a good first impression is often an immense source of anxiety for those trying to date. If you own an Android, you might be at a significant disadvantage once you exchange numbers and your date sees those dreaded green text bubbles.
In fact, those green messages might even be a deal breaker. A 1000 person survey in 2024 found that 23% of iPhone users said that owning an Android was a dating dealbreaker.
The social pressure to own an iPhone does not just exist in the dating world, the same survey found that 24% of Android users have been left out of group chats for their choice in cellphone. Many Android users face this type of teasing or exclusionary treatment over their phone choice, which is an overly cruel amount of judgement for a simple purchase. However, what many fail to realize is that this is a symptom of Apple’s anti-competitive features.
Apple encourages this treatment of Android users through their software, with green messages that identify when a text comes from another operating system, or the lowering of photo and video qualities when sent from an Android to an iPhone. Due to Apple’s refusal to fully integrate messaging, iPhone and Android users must deal with technical issues and incompatibility of certain features when messaging cross-platform.
Issues like these are a small part of Apple’s ongoing antitrust lawsuit with the Department of Justice, which alleges that Apple has a monopoly on cellphones in the United States. Using the tool of social pressure, Apple utilizes these anti-competitive features in order to stifle competition – with control of 58% of the cellphone market in the country.
Their intentions are quite obvious too. When someone at a tech conference in 2022 questioned CEO Tim Cook about their inability to send videos with their Android-owning mother, Cook replied, “Buy your mom an iPhone.”
Apple clearly wants the blame shifted onto those who refuse to get an iPhone instead of on Apple for their anti-competitive practices, and sadly, many iPhone users fall for this trick.
Sometimes the hate towards Android users seems simply out of annoyance that texting becomes less convenient. However, sometimes it is more mean-spirited.
Often Android users are mocked because their phones are seen as cheaper and lower quality, with the camera quality being the target of ridicule. While this perception of Androids is not necessarily correct – as many models can be just as expensive as iPhones – it is still shocking that many think it is okay to mock somebody for wanting a cheaper phone. Often the line seems to get blurred; are we making fun of someone because their phone is worse or because we think they are “too poor” to buy an iPhone?
Many iPhone users who talk negatively of Android fail to see how its success will benefit them as consumers. When the phone market is not competitive, Apple is allowed to charge unreasonable prices and stagnate in their innovation. If more people bought Androids and other operating systems, Apple would be more incentivized to improve their products; or at least make them less overpriced. When people pressure others to buy an iPhone, they fall right into Apple’s plan of alienating the users of their competitors, thus harming the consumer’s own leverage as a buyer.
Considering the anti-consumer practices that Apple has been criticized for in the past, such as software updates slowing down their older phones or discouraging people from repairing their products, perhaps a more competitive phone market in the U.S. would further encourage them to win back public trust.
