At least in the US, it's very common. The iPhone has ~60% market share here, skewed even higher if you limit to higher income individuals. Text messaging is still the lingua franca of communication here, likely due to the lack of a single dominant messaging app. For those iPhone users, the UX of texting someone on an iPhone with iMessage is vastly superior to texting via MMS with Android users.

In my family they are. I am in Australia and almost everyone I text has their phone number come up in blue, signifying iMessage/iPhone

For example, when RSVPing to a kid's birthday party, other parents' numbers are inevitably blue. When selling and buying items, the contacts for those sales have always been blue numbers, it's rare to encounter a number that doesn't "turn blue" when I enter it into the "to" field

I would say maybe 5% of the people I know and text use Android. For one of those people I use Signal, one other has asked me to use Facebook Messenger, one has asked me to use WhatsApp, and the remaining few use SMS. It's a pain to use three separate apps to message just these three people!

One of my cousins switched to an Android phone. This broke our long-standing group message in iMessage, so she was no longer able to be included in it. After two years of this her siblings simply ordered her a new iPhone and she is back in the group chat

Getting everyone to move their default messaging behaviour for one person is a huge ask. It was easier for one person to just relay the group chat info instead, but when this became annoying, it was even easier to buy her a new phone

It's highly dependent on the demographic I think. I'd guess that I'm younger than you based on your comment about having kids, and everyone in my social circles use Facebook messenger or instagram.

Interesting, my kids all have 20+ large iMessage groups for their friends at school. They play Minecraft and Among Us while on FaceTime calls. They are in the 8 - 11 year range. So it is certainly down to demographics, but perhaps not age

My daughter's parents group is all iMessage. The group is too large to even downgrade to SMS. I am excluded entirely unless I figure out methods to get into that group.

It is very annoying and quite real.

> Are these iMessage group chat really a thing?

For some, but everyone knows and has the capacity to download WhatsApp.

The root issue is there is a lot of judgment about Android users, hence wanting to restrict chats to iMessage. It’s a signal that you are part of the in group vs out group.

Although, it is objectively convenient to have a group of all iMessage users at events, because any pics/video get shared at high quality with no extra work.

Walled garden development practices sold under the guise of privacy and security. It's a very tired and old playbook that has real societal damage. So. Tired. Of. It.

There’s a reason why robocalls and spam emails and spam paper mail are a nearly universal thing and iMessage spam is not.

Ironically in the initial beep announcement some people mentionned in the comments that imessage spam was already a thing.

The US is odd that way that unified chat apps haven't made as much of a headway. iMessage way more dominant in the US and is the leader.