iMessage on Android
Honest question: do you think Apple will bring iMessage to Android? I feel like the list of reasons they should outweighs the shouldn’t in 2018.
Apple Pay Cash is the business model. As is the Halo Effect of doing it well. And yes, I think a CloudKit backed iMessage could be both reliable and good.
Also think about the value in being the message service people use.
I, too, wonder the calculus for keeping iMessage Apple-exclusive will change. In this case, Apple Pay everywhere could be a great business, but I doubt that Apple would want to deal with supporting it on third-party hardware with differing mechanisms for secure storage, which are not controlled by them.
Update (2018-02-05): See also: Rene Ritchie.
