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That would be an interesting chance: buy an iPhone and get it with the hardware, or download and app and pay Apple a subscription. I wonder how many Android users would be willing to pay the subscription?

AIUI FaceTime is already made from 3GPP and IETF standards, just apple holds the encryption keys and the auth servers.

I thought Apple intended to do that but found out the a lot of the tech was patent-encumbered.

The story is Steve Jobs just announced that without consulting any engineers first. It was a total surprise to them.

They actually seemed to be working on it, but Apple was quickly hit with a patent suit from some company over FaceTime. I believe they had to re-architect how it worked to get around the patent.

They haven’t done anything about it since then. I wonder if they simply can’t because of patents. Either way by now I think they’ve decided it’s a strategic advantage and they wouldn’t do it by choice.