> But most people don't because it's the default. MS was found to have a monopoly with IE even though there were alternatives.
Windows also was the dominant operating system with a market share in the 90% or higher. iOS isn't even the market leader in the US let alone the world, so can't really be a monopoly now can it?
iPhone and Samsung combined make up almost 80% of smart phone market share in the US. Being as Statistia is a premium thing I can't get accurate numbers, but lets say splitting 50/50 because if it was anything with any serious gap, they wouldn't group them the same. I'd assume they're high 40's and low 50's split between the two, so means iPhone is ~40%, now I ain't no math magician or anything but that leaves ~60% for non-iPhone devices.
In plenty of other threads I've seen people bring up that in the US most phones are iPhones, they are the most popular choice by far. I can't remember where they sourced the info from and not about to research it myself though, at least not at the moment.
> Really? It's never insisted upon for any core service?
You might need to qualify "core service" here, but no. Calls, SMS, MMS, internet all work fine without an account. You need an account to download apps from the app store, but that's a different argument. If you wanted to, there are various methods to load apps up without an account too (side loading via Xcode, MDM, etc).
Really? It's never insisted upon for any core service?
> You can also use SMS without iMessage.
But most people don't because it's the default. MS was found to have a monopoly with IE even though there were alternatives.