Have you forgotten about apple credit card/apple pay? apple has already gotten into payments but they own the whole hardware platform, they don't need to shoehorn a tab into iMessage like WeChat has to
All I'm saying is iMessage could be a lot bigger than it is, if it was a universal app. And right now it's becoming irrelevant compared to WhatsApp etc.
I see a lot of upside and not a lot of downside for Apple here
I see a lot of upside and not a lot of downside for Apple here