Our iPhones are about to change forever. They will do this from iOS 17.4 and it will mainly affect the App Store. Basically, they will allow you to install apps on other stores outside of the App Store, which is mandated by new European laws known as DSA and DMA. And the truth is that Apple is not the only one forced to adopt changes.
WhatsApp will also have to be open via “interoperability”. A slightly strange term, but with a clear meaning: WhatsApp will no longer be used just for sending WhatsApp. Europe doesn’t want monopolies and messaging apps need to be connected to each other.
The basic idea is to send a message from any application and receive it from another
Europe is putting pressure on Apple and other companies it sees as having a monopoly on messaging apps. The idea of Europe is not to create impositions of applications to be able to communicate between users and that a message can be sent by any of them and that the other user receives it from its application. iMessage, WhatsApp, Telegram, Apple Signal… They all need to be able to work with each other (at least that’s what Europe wants).
This would therefore allow We can always contact anyone regardless of their messaging app.. In fact, we don’t need to know which one they use. The idea is to send a message from the application we are using, with the same interface that we have until now and that the other person receives it in their application without knowing if we sent it from this same platform or not.
The fact is that Apple is reluctant to do this and has a good excuse which, at the very least, contributes to extending their deadlines. In the United States, the use of iMessage is massive, which does not happen on such a scale in Europe. At least this is the intuition that many experts have (we have), even if Europe doubts it.
Because of the way iMessage works, it’s difficult to know how many real users iMessage has. This service is activated on practically all iPhones and we can therefore assume that every European with an iPhone is a user of Apple’s messaging application. However, this is not true. The fact that the service is active does not imply that it is used. And that’s exactly what Apple is saying and what Europe is currently investigating.
Unlike Apple, WhatsApp already strives to comply with the law and be “interoperable”
While Europe has just resolved the conflict with Apple regarding its messaging service, WhatsApp is already moving forward to enable the interoperability of its application. In fact, the plan has been in the works for some time now. This same week, Wired once again showed progress in this area thanks to the application owned by Meta (formerly Facebook).
However, WhatsApp does not want it to be something completely free and universal. The platform’s head of engineering, Dick Brouwer, told Wired that they needed security encryption identical to that available in WhatsApp is guaranteed. That is to say end-to-end encryption which, in the case of this application, follows the Signal protocol (an application with which interoperability would be guaranteed a priori).
Brouwer also made it clear that At first they will have certain limitations, since they will focus on sending text messages, voice messages, images, videos and files between two people. To create group chats or also enable call interoperability, you will have to wait a few years.
Therefore, sending an iMessage and receiving it on WhatsApp will not be possible at the moment, unless Europe manages to demonstrate that Apple has a monopoly on the continent. It seems that sooner or later this will be something available on WhatsApp along with other popular apps other than Apple’s. And always whether one is iOS and the other Android or both are on the same platform. That’s interoperability.
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