Amazon working on mobile messaging service to rival Apple Messages
Amazon last week began querying customers over potential features they would like to see included in a new mobile messaging platform called "Anytime," which according to reports boasts text and video chat, voice calling, group tasks and social networking functionality.
Surveys seen by existing customers include slides explaining the service and seem to suggest Anytime is close to launch, reports AFTVNews. Like other standalone messaging platforms, Amazon's foray is expected to make a debut on both iOS and Android.
From images seen by the blog, Anytime appears to be an all-in-one messaging solution that incorporates social networking elements. For example, encrypted text, video and voice chats are accompanied by public photo and video sharing features with "@" mentions, filters and special effects, all staples of services like Instagram and Twitter.
Anytime will also fold in group features like playing games, listening to music, ordering food and sharing location data, the report said. Being an Amazon product, the platform is intrinsically tied to commerce and is expected to facilitate communication with businesses, place reservations at restaurants and order items through Amazon's internet shopping portal.
How Amazon expects to integrate contacts is unknown, though an informational slide says users can get in touch with other people "just using their name." Phone numbers are apparently not required, suggesting Amazon will have users sign up for the service using email credentials or piggyback on to existing social networks and messaging apps.
Amazon might be building off its Chime video conferencing service, a cross-platform product that launched earlier this year for enterprise users. Alternatively, Anytime could borrow from Alexa's recently released messaging and calling features.
The features tipped by Amazon's survey line up closely with new functionality coming to iPhone and iPad with iOS 11. Apple is adding a slew of new assets with the upcoming operating system including photo filters and special effects powered by advanced computer vision technology, social music sharing via Apple Music, iCloud syncing for Messages, one-to-one Apple Pay payments and much more.
Surveys seen by existing customers include slides explaining the service and seem to suggest Anytime is close to launch, reports AFTVNews. Like other standalone messaging platforms, Amazon's foray is expected to make a debut on both iOS and Android.
From images seen by the blog, Anytime appears to be an all-in-one messaging solution that incorporates social networking elements. For example, encrypted text, video and voice chats are accompanied by public photo and video sharing features with "@" mentions, filters and special effects, all staples of services like Instagram and Twitter.
Anytime will also fold in group features like playing games, listening to music, ordering food and sharing location data, the report said. Being an Amazon product, the platform is intrinsically tied to commerce and is expected to facilitate communication with businesses, place reservations at restaurants and order items through Amazon's internet shopping portal.
How Amazon expects to integrate contacts is unknown, though an informational slide says users can get in touch with other people "just using their name." Phone numbers are apparently not required, suggesting Amazon will have users sign up for the service using email credentials or piggyback on to existing social networks and messaging apps.
Amazon might be building off its Chime video conferencing service, a cross-platform product that launched earlier this year for enterprise users. Alternatively, Anytime could borrow from Alexa's recently released messaging and calling features.
The features tipped by Amazon's survey line up closely with new functionality coming to iPhone and iPad with iOS 11. Apple is adding a slew of new assets with the upcoming operating system including photo filters and special effects powered by advanced computer vision technology, social music sharing via Apple Music, iCloud syncing for Messages, one-to-one Apple Pay payments and much more.
Comments
One reason is that it works on all of your Apple devices - iPhones, iPads, Macs. If you call or video-call a person with your iPhone to their iPhone, they can seamlessly answer on the iPhone, iPad, or Mac. Apple's system will route through the internet and will do it with end-to-end encryption. You can't do that why any other messaging system.
Google tried to create a messaging system to attract Apple customers. But it is only available on iOS.
Only Microsoft has created a similar system since Skype works on PCs, Macs and iPhone. But Microsoft no longer does phones - leaving a huge part of the market to its competitors. And only Skype for Business has end-to-end encryption.
It's off topic for this article, but I would like to see HomePod allow for text and calls to answered and made via the device, which cellular calls piggybacking on your iPhone connection. This is an area where Amazon can't do what Apple can do in this space. It would be even more convenient than hands-free calling in the car. The Apple TV could even display caller info or text messages if you didn't want to listen her the service read back comment. Lots of potential with Apple that others can't match.
It's worth noting that WhatsApp has a desktop application and a web interface. Outside China, WhatsApp is the defacto standard with Line and Telegram as most people's backup.
It is funny that fans of the company that renamed itself from "Apple Computer, Inc." to "Apple Inc." in 2007 precisely because personal computers were no longer going to be their primary product because since then they have moved into areas like mobile devices, wearables/IoT, AR/VR, AI, streaming media, cloud, green energy, original entertainment etc. and plans still more expansions into the future is telling everyone else to stay in their lanes. Seriously?
As far as the old "create as many new products as possible in the hope that something sticks" it is very simple to answer that: structured versus RAD. Waterfall versus agile. Apple is the former, along with IBM, Cisco, Microsoft, HP, Oracle, Sony, Nintento, Intel, and the American telecom companies (AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon etc.). The latter includes Google, Amazon, Facebook, Salesforce, Qualcomm and a lot of the South Korean/Taiwanese/Chinese hardware companies (Samsung Mobile, Nvidia, Acer, Asustek, Huawei). Which of those are doing better right now? Before you answer, realize that the former legacy waterfall group also included the likes of DEC, NCR, RCA, GE, Motorola, Eastman Kodak, Xerox, Toshiba and Mitsubishi. Which means that nearly all have been bought by foreign competition (RCA, Motorola), have all but exited the hardware game and are now eking along as software/services only (AT&T, NCR, IBM) or flat out no longer exist in a meaningful sense. By contrast the only major RAD company to have truly gone belly-up was Sun. Which means that not only is Apple the biggest company in the world, but also the last major player of its kind.
Remember that before you mock all these other companies for not having the same product strategy and overall business model as Apple. Because nearly every other company that does things the way that Apple does is either out of business, heading that way or is only surviving as as a shell of its former self. Meaning that what works so well for Apple will probably not work as well for well for everyone else. And for that matter, it is highly debatable how Apple's way of doing things worked before the iPhone or will continue to so after it as more and more things shift to the very platform-independent web and cloud based models that you folks mock Google, Amazon, Facebook etc. for using to make billions, with a good chunk of it coming from Apple's own hardware and in competing with Apple's own software and services.
Bait.
I clicked.