To me they hope this buys more time before they are forced to open up iMessage. They know in the long run they will have to open up but they can delay it a few more years.
How will they open up iMessage? It uses a bunch of iOS specific features. If they ever did, they would have to strip it of a few of the features that only work on Apple products and it would be a separate app that you would probably need an Apple ID to use. Like how you need a Facebook account to use Facebook Messenger. At that point, it would just be like a worse version of WhatsApp. It would be pretty pointless, unless you really want to have a blue bubble with iPhone friends.
To me they hope this buys more time before they are forced to open up iMessage. They know in the long run they will have to open up but they can delay it a few more years.
What I foresee is iMessage in blue bubble, SMS in green bubble and RCS in orange bubble when running the iOS Messages app in the future.
How will they open up iMessage? It uses a bunch of iOS specific features. If they ever did, they would have to strip it of a few of the features that only work on Apple products and it would be a separate app that you would probably need an Apple ID to use. Like how you need a Facebook account to use Facebook Messenger. At that point, it would just be like a worse version of WhatsApp. It would be pretty pointless, unless you really want to have a blue bubble with iPhone friends.