TL;DR: Apple dominates the US smartphone market, but EU regulations may offer Android a chance for resurgence by enforcing messaging interoperability and standardizing hardware features.
TL;DR: Apple dominates the US smartphone market, but EU regulations may offer Android a chance for resurgence by enforcing messaging interoperability and standardizing hardware features.
This isn’t really a problem outside the US. All other countries with millions of people around the world that use WhatsApp as the default messaging platform simply install it as soon as they get the phone just like any other popular app, such as Instagram, Uber, or whatever.
The only reason iMessage is so used in the US is because up to this day it still uses SMS for texting for historical reasons (which I believe is SMS being free in all plans since time immemorial).