The creators of the Beeper Mini messenger continue to try to bypass the blocking by Apple and give Android users full access to iMessage, threatening the Cupertino company with a lawsuit. American legislators have already taken an interest in the situation.
In early December 2023, Beeper announced that it had found a way to give Android users direct access to iMessage technology and launched a dedicated Beeper Mini messenger. It wasn't long before Apple blocked the loopholes that allowed this to work. Beeper didn't give up and continued to find ways to get customers back to iMessage.
Beeper CEO Eric Mihikovsky in a comment to The Information insisted that the company will not stop and is ready to sue Apple due to the blocking.
“We are certainly looking into the legal implications for Apple. As for antitrust, competition about how they made iPhone users worse off with this change. … Apple has monopoly power as the largest phone manufacturer in the US. More than 50% of US residents use iPhone and iMessage, which is standard on this device,” says Migikovsky.
The head of Beeper notes that their ultimate goal is not to create an iMessage client for Android, but to implement an application that would support many messaging services at the same time. Mihikovsky also claims that the new program was in high demand. According to him, in the first 48 hours after the launch, the owner of the messenger went “from zero income to 1 million US dollars annually”, and the share of those who purchased the application after the trial version was about 50%.
In addition to the court case with Beeper, the tech giant faces inspections by US regulators. A bipartisan group of U.S. senators and members of the U.S. House of Representatives this week called on the Justice Department to investigate whether Apple violated antitrust laws by trying to block Beeper Mini's access to iMessage. The senators asked the assistant attorney general to look into Apple's “potentially anti-competitive conduct.”
As a reminder, Apple launched its free instant messaging service iMessage back in 2011. It allows you to send text, documents, photos, videos, contact information and is an alternative to SMS and MMS for users with iOS or macOS devices.
Customers without Apple devices can use third-party apps to send messages to iMessage. If the user does not want to use another application or the web version of iMessage, it is possible to communicate with clients of this service using SMS messages.
Numerous developers have tried to make iMessage work on Android. Beeper Mini, which provided direct connection to Apple services, was called the most amazing of such programs. Apple claimed that the developer's methods created “significant security risks” because he used fake credentials to work, which made the company's internal systems believe that the user was using a Mac or an iPhone.