Exactly. Apple has more influence over the cellular industry in America than any single company including the carriers themselves. They could completely design

Exactly. Apple has more influence over the cellular industry in America than any single company including the carriers themselves. They could completely design the spec by themselves with all the pro-consumer features that one could imagine including things like distributed spam filtering and then force the carriers to adopt it either by using the stick (force adoption by X date or lose the iPhone) or the carrot (shift proprietary iMessage features to the new standard so that users demand the carrier adopt it -- basically green bubble any carrier that doesn't use the standard). No other company in the country could do this. But of course, complete control over a proprietary iMessage protocol that they can lock competitors out of is apart of the business strategy.