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Emoji as a Platform Moat

There have been a few reports recently about Apple rejecting apps which make use of Apple’s emoji set outside of the keyboard.

I find this very surprising. Emojis are a completely underrated platform moat, in my opinion.

Android and iOS have become more and more similar and there are hardly any switching costs left for consumers:

  • Both operating systems offer pretty much the same features
  • You have high-end devices for both platforms (most importantly equal camera quality)
  • All major apps are available for both iOS and Android
  • Switching from iOS to Android literally doesn’t take more than a few minutes

This leaves Apple with only handful advantages over Android:

  • New apps are usually released on iOS first (temporary exclusivity)
  • Apps which are only available on iOS, most importantly iMessage
  • And: Emojis

Android has several emoji-problems:

I don’t have data to back this up, but I’m pretty sure there are psychological switching costs because you feel partly excluded from the conversations you are having with your iOS-friends (especially in group chats).

So Apple should embrace the use of its emoji set as much as possible, but prohibit developers from using them in their Android apps (which I assume has happened in the case of WhatsApp and Slack).

It’d be great if someone would come up with an open-source set of great looking emoji that become the standard across all platforms.

× DATE: Thu, Feb 15, 2018
× TIME: 9:58:00 am
× LOCATION: Berlin, DE (52.5025406, 13.4121981)
× BEHAVIOR:
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