[Arnt]

They say they don't do that. Here's one way it could have happened:

Suppose Apple had plans to monetise iMessage at the time it was developed and eventually decided against it for whatever reason. This would leave the company with a an app running on most phones. What to do? I can easily imaging someone standing up in a meeting and suggesting: "Well, running it costs very little, why don't we just minimise the cost of running it and keep providing it for as long as the cost is low?"

[bloppe]

That doesn't change that fact that they're monetizing it via hardware sales

[Arnt]

You mean that whenever an organisation pays for a loss-making operation using income from its hardware sales, that operation is monetised via hardware sales?

That doesn't make sense to me. It makes monetisation be a synonym of funding.

Surely, monetisation means that you do x in order to earn income from hardware sales. That is to say, your motivation counts, or rationale. The rationale is of course only known to people who attend the relevant budget meetings.