There are two important lessons to take from iMessage:
1. Simplicity in product design and UX is key here. You sign in with your AppleID when you setup the phone and then it's basically seamless: it'll use AppleID through Apple's messaging systems and infrastructure when it can, otherwise it uses SMS.
2. Steve Jobs completely turned the mobile phone industry on its head by creating a product users wanted and then extracting conditions from telcos. This was the reason for years of AT&T exclusivity. It allowed devs to install apps on the device (rather than the telco gatekeeeping that). Telcos couldn't install their crapware on the phones (eg Japanese telcos resisted the iPhone for years because of this). The iMessage system broke the SMS monopoly.
Google's model of creating an OS and then putting a suite of apps on top of that allowing phone manufacturers and telcos to "customize" the experience (ie putting their crapware on; Bixby anyone?). One can argue they had to do this to win market share. Or that it's "right". Either way, for many users this is a worse experience.
Compare this to the 217 different chat apps that are in the Google graveyard. Maybe because of the Android model it wasn't possible but quite literally Google did everything they could not to copy iMessage.
Hangouts, Chat or whatever it's called now has been around for 15+ years and seems like such a missed opportunity. Google didn't budge on your email being identity (which Eric Schmidt later stated was a mistake) and it's weird how primitive Google's chat apps are (eg AFAICS there's no easy way to send GIFs in Chat, like WTF?).
I don't think the green/blue thing was planned by Apple in terms of status. It is easy marketing though. People like iPhones so the blue bubble is a kind of flex though. I suspect that was more incidental than planned.
iMessage didn't break the SMS monopoly alone; I'd argue that WhatsApp played a more important role.
WhatsApp launched in Jan 2009, almost 2 years before iMessage launched in Oct 2011. Instead of being locked to one smartphone ecosystem, WhatsApp supported all platforms, including Android and feature phones (and the iPhone). This facilitated its worldwide adoption, in countries where feature phones were more common at the time (or still are). From some rough research/estimates, WhatsApp's adoption is probably roughly 2-3x that of iMessage on a monthly-active-user basis. (This is based on an estimate that roughly 1 billion people have iPhones; and that most but probably not all of them use iMessage.) In March of 2020, WhatsApp had over 2 billion MAU.
iMessage may have broken the monopoly in the USA (where WhatsApp usage is less popular), but WhatsApp arguably played the more important role in most other countries.
I won't dispute that the iPhone may have broken the "telcos install crapware" standard though. (Even today, from what I understand, telcos can install and update software on the phone, or some part of its hardware, but I believe it's limited to the telecommunication software/hardware, not apps on the phone OS.)
> Instead of being locked to one smartphone ecosystem, WhatsApp supported all platforms, including Android and feature phones (and the iPhone). This facilitated its worldwide adoption, in countries where feature phones were more common at the time (or still are).
I recall there being other cross platform apps out there, like Skype, Viber, Tango, and others. But what blew me away, and what I assume blew others away about WhatsApp, is that it simply used your phone number and SMS 1 factor authentication as your verification/login.
This solved the problem of spammers, plus no login name/password combo made it dead simple for non tech literate people. My grandparents in a developing country figured it out without even knowing English.
And the app itself was just extremely polished. I remember being so frustrated at sharing contacts, and then WhatsApp came out, and sharing contacts became extremely easy.
This is a US-centric point of view. For most of the world, WhatsApp was the key communication app that broke the SMS monopoly. Furthermore, it's not part of a walled garden, being available on all platforms - unlike iMessage which Apple intentionally makes available only on Mac platforms. By comparison, WhatsApp is available on Android and various feature phones, as well as the iPhone, and provides a web client (web.whatsapp.com) and native clients for Windows and Mac (whatsapp.com/download) (and Linux too, though that software is business-oriented).
1. Simplicity in product design and UX is key here. You sign in with your AppleID when you setup the phone and then it's basically seamless: it'll use AppleID through Apple's messaging systems and infrastructure when it can, otherwise it uses SMS.
2. Steve Jobs completely turned the mobile phone industry on its head by creating a product users wanted and then extracting conditions from telcos. This was the reason for years of AT&T exclusivity. It allowed devs to install apps on the device (rather than the telco gatekeeeping that). Telcos couldn't install their crapware on the phones (eg Japanese telcos resisted the iPhone for years because of this). The iMessage system broke the SMS monopoly.
Google's model of creating an OS and then putting a suite of apps on top of that allowing phone manufacturers and telcos to "customize" the experience (ie putting their crapware on; Bixby anyone?). One can argue they had to do this to win market share. Or that it's "right". Either way, for many users this is a worse experience.
Compare this to the 217 different chat apps that are in the Google graveyard. Maybe because of the Android model it wasn't possible but quite literally Google did everything they could not to copy iMessage.
Hangouts, Chat or whatever it's called now has been around for 15+ years and seems like such a missed opportunity. Google didn't budge on your email being identity (which Eric Schmidt later stated was a mistake) and it's weird how primitive Google's chat apps are (eg AFAICS there's no easy way to send GIFs in Chat, like WTF?).
I don't think the green/blue thing was planned by Apple in terms of status. It is easy marketing though. People like iPhones so the blue bubble is a kind of flex though. I suspect that was more incidental than planned.