Meta claims it’s not a monopoly because iMessage outperforms Facebook Messenger. Image Credit: Meta
Social media giant Meta claims that it can’t be considered a monopoly because iMessage outperforms Facebook Messenger on iOS.
Meta, Facebook’s parent company, has been dealing with an antitrust lawsuit for over four years. In December 2020, the FTC alleged that the social media giant engaged in anti-competitive practices and wanted to break up the company.
The lawsuit itself was initially dismissed by a Federal Court Judge in June 2021, but the FTC filed a more robust and detailed complaint in 2022. The case is still ongoing, and now Meta has provided additional details and arguments.
On Monday, the social media company provided its opening statement, for which it used a series of slides. The slides were afterwards made public, albeit with redactions. As was noted by The Verge, however, Meta’s redactions were poorly executed, making them easy to remove.
Meta’s slides reveal data about Facebook Messenger and how it performs in relation to Apple’s Messages app. Image Credit: Meta Platforms, Inc.
One of the slides reveals the weekly usage of Facebook Messenger and Instagram, and how it compares to Apple’s built-in Messages app. The information suggests that neither of the two apps comes close to the default iOS messaging app.
With the redactions removed, Meta’s slide contains the following numbers:
Apple Messages: 88.39%
Instagram: 48.19%
Facebook Messenger: 37.55%
WhatsApp: 36.76%
Snapchat: 23.04%
Right next to the numbers is an image of what appears to be an internal Apple document. The page featured in Meta’s slides bears a resemblance to authentic Apple documents, AppleInsider was told.
The only bit of the slide that was not redacted was a quote by Apple’s Director of Product Marketing, Ronak Shah. It reads:
A “core use case” of iMessage is “to allow users to communicate with the people that are in their life that they know.”
Meta believes it can’t be considered a monopoly because Apple’s default Messages application outperforms Facebook Messenger and Instagram. The company also cited the likes of TikTok and YouTube, and claimed that rival products and services were “thriving.”
The outcome of the case ultimately remains to be seen. Given that the antitrust lawsuit has been an ongoing matter since 2020, however, it could be years before a decision is finally made.
Sony & Hisense are pioneering RGB LED tech to rival OLED displays.
RGB LEDs improve color accuracy at wider angles and brightness without burn-in risk.
RGB LEDs reduce bloom and offer large panels at cheaper prices than OLEDs.
If you ask most AV enthusiasts what the best display technology is right now, they’d probably respond with some variant of OLED panel. However, one of the best TV makers in the world has decided that OLED is not the way forward, and instead brings us RGB LED technology.
In mid-March of 2025, Sony unveiled its RGB LED technology. It’s not the only company pushing this OLED alternative, with Hisense aiming to launch RGB mini- and micro-LED TVs in 2025. So why are these companies bucking the OLED trend?
Sony’s RGB Backlight Tech Explained
Just in case you need a refresher, the main difference between OLED and LCD panels is that OLEDs are emissive. In other words, each OLED pixel emits its own light. This means that it can switch itself off and offer perfect black levels, among a few other advantages. LCDs need a “backlight” and one of the primary ways LCDs have improved over the years has been about backlight innovations as much as improvements to the liquid crystals.
Early LCDs used a simple CCFL (Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamp) backlight with an internal reflector to spread the light around. As you might imagine, this was awful, and I still remember the cold and hot spots on my first LCD monitor being so bad that I thought there was something wrong with it.
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Since then, LCDs have been upgraded with LED backlights, which were placed all around the edges of the screen, so that it was far more evenly lit. Then the backlights were also added directly behind the screen, which allowed for neat tricks like local dimming. Now miniLED screens put hundreds or thousands of LED lights behind the screen, allowing for very precise local dimming, which improved contrast and black levels immensely.
SONY
However, so far all of these LED backlight solutions have used a white (or blue) LED source. RGB LEDs replace this white LED with an RGB LED that can be any color. This means that the LED behind a given set of pixels is being driven with the same color light as the pixel is meant to produce and removes the need for color filters.
SONY
If you take the LCD layer off completely, then an RGB miniLED backlight would look like a low-res version of the original image. With enough LEDs, the image is still recognizable!
The Sony display demoed by the company promises 99% of the DCI-P3 color spectrum, and 90% of the next-gen BT.2020 spectrum. Making these displays some of the most color-accurate screens money can buy. With fewer layers of stuff in the display stack, and much more pure color to boot, the image looks vibrant, accurate, and maintains its color purity from a wider set of angles.
Take this into account the next time you buy a monitor, TV, or printer.
More Brightness, No Burn In
The less stuff you have between the light source and the surface of the screen, the brighter the image can be. Hisense’s RGB LED TVs are slated for 2025 promise a peak brightness of 10,000 nits! That is way beyond the brightest OLED panels, even LG’s tandem OLED that was demonstrated in January 2025, which maxes out at 4,000 nits.
While LCDs can have image retention, they are far, far less prone to it than OLEDs, and the brighter you run an OLED, the greater the chances of permanent image retention or “burn-in”. So RGB LEDs will absolutely smoke OLEDs when it comes to brightness, with virtually none of the risk.
One of the big issues with LED LCDs, even the latest miniLEDs, is “bloom”. This is when light from the backlight in the bright part of an image spills over into the dark parts. Even on LCDs with thousands of dimming zones, you can see this when there’s something very bright next to something very dark.
LG
For example, my iPad Pro has a mini-LED screen, and if the brightness is turned up you can see bloom around white text on a black background, such as with subtitles or the end-credits of a movie. In content, you’d see this with laser blasts in space, or a big spotlight in the night sky.
RGB LEDs significantly reduce bloom thanks to the precise control of the brightness and color of each RGB backlight element. So you get contrast levels closer to that of an OLED, but you still get the brightness and color purity advantages.
Perhaps the biggest deal of all is price. While I expect Sony’s Bravia 10s to have a price that will make your eyes water even more than the nits rating, the fact is that RGB LED tech will be cheaper than OLEDs, especially as you scale up to larger panel sizes. While the price of smaller OLEDs (e.g. 55-inches or smaller) has come down significantly, making bigger OLEDs is hard, and when you get to around 100-inches prices go practically vertical.
So don’t be surprised if TVs larger than 100 inches are dominated by RBG LED technology in the future, because getting 90% of what OLED offers at a much lower price will likely be too hard to resist.
OLED Still Has Tricks up Its Sleeve
Justin Duino / How-To Geek
With all that said, it’s not like OLED technology will stand still or is in major trouble. OLED’s perfect black levels, lack of bloom, and contrast levels are still better and will likely always be better. So those who are absolute sticklers for those elements of image quality will still buy them. Manufacturers are working on the issue of burn in and making it less of a problem with each new generation of screen.
LG B4 OLED
$1000 $1700 Save
$700
OLED still has faster pixel response rates too, and lower latency (under the right circumstances), so gamers are also another audience who’ll likely want OLED technology to stick around. QD-OLEDs are upping the game when it comes to color vibrancy and gamut as well.
Ultimately, having different display technologies duke it out for supremacy is good for you and me, because it means better TVs and monitors at lower prices.
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