Comment by WhyNotHugo

The "messaging interoperability" point strikes me as a weird one.

In the US, people tend to use iMessages, which is not interoperable with other ecosystems. But iPhone place no limitation on third party messaging apps. Indeed, the rest of the world simply ignores the existence of iMessages and uses other applications for messaging (these vary per country/region, but I don't think that iMessages has any significant market share in any other country).

There's not technical reason preventing people in the US from using another messaging platform, and there are no limitations imposed on third party messaging apps. It's really just a cultural issue of people _choosing_ iMessages. Probably just network effect.