But they don't because when their own customers communicate with others customers the conversation is no longer private and if they aren't sufficiently technically knowledgeable then their own customers might not even know it's not secure.
Funny thing is Apple's competitors don't make money. Apple has ~50% of all smartphone revenue and 87% of the world's total smartphone profit share - iPhone X alone was 35% of global profit share with, to your point, only 22% of the market. Less, even, my data shows 19% of shipments most recently. Samsung is next in line off the back of approximately equal shipment volumes. Everyone else effectively breaks even or loses money. [1]
Funny, I think nearly every article coming out about the location tracking, reading your contacts, reading your messages, and even malware on mobile has come out saying roughly "it's on android, but a much lesser version is on iOS" or even better "only on android."
So... what exactly did we lose with buying an iPhone in the context of this conversation? The ability to change the launcher?
Maybe you're ok with apple's limitations, I'm not. That's ok because I'm not you and I'm not asking/forcing you to change anything. So what exactly is your point? Choice is a wonderful thing.
Not saying I agree with this line of thinking but I personally think cross platform iMessage would benefit iMessage users privacy significantly. You can't control what OS your friends use.
I think the real reason why might be something along the lines of anti SPAM or botting; iMessage seems to require an authentic, unleaked serial number to connect, as I found out a while ago when connecting my Hackintosh. (I succeeded but I have a feeling many real Mac serial numbers get banned from iCloud by Hackintosh users sniping them out of pictures in eBay listings and whatnot.
I think this jab is unwarranted. Android with security updates is not significantly less secure. Talking historically, Android started with more security measures than iOS, with app sandboxing from the get go. Nowadays modern devices contain dm-verity for verified boot, layered security at various levels including SELinux, etc.
Not suggesting there hasn't been more security issues with Android overall, but there's also more devices and more available source code with Android, and iOS is far from having a clean track record for exploits either. If it did, you wouldn't be so limited in which versions of iOS you could restore in iTunes...
Because their message isn’t “we offer privacy to everyone in the world” but “we offer privacy to our customers”.