Apple Messages for Business has been around for a while, but it's mostly for communicating with a corporation vs consumer products. And iOS presents it like a support chat instead of a normal conversation.
They position it as "Apple user to business communication." They don't limit it to customer service/tech support. Bllie Eillish and the Haas F1 team just launched a fan experiences on it. Saw The Nudge is on it as well, which was a big upgrade from their old SMS experience.
You're trying to figure out what it is incrementally, and I'm telling you Apple Messages for Business is ancient news and isn't fit for the purpose described: https://www.apple.com/ios/business-chat/
The "experiences" are not normal 1:1 iMessage conversations. You're joining an outreach channel, and only large corporations (that includes whoever does distribution for Billie Eilish) qualify.
Proper consumer apps like:
- tomo.ai
- poke.com
- fractal.space
Are all building on services that give you an actual iMessage phone number, and those are what I'd like to see actually offer self-serve one day, just like SMS.