It's a bit more complicated than that right? There is definitely a corporate component there (FaceTime is one, iMessage is another) and they have a strong tendency to attempt to .. extort? .. others to pay for their standards. But they usually use standards that are available.
If they do build something on their own, they have a reason. Most often technical. E.g. lightning is strictly better than any alternative that was available when they were introducing it (and that it didn't become the USB-C form factor is partially due to them wanting high licensing revenue). And really... you don't get why they created their own CPUs? Which hands down beat anything else out there on perf/watt and allow their systems to have incredible battery runtime on really tiny batteries?
Is it that complicated? Instead of being an industry leader, they seem to just want money and sticky users. I'm not an Apple hater by any stretch, but this seems to be a fact. In other words, they could have lead the way to better calls/sms by making facetime the standard, but instead we have green bubbles. Literally, they are the reason their own competition exists. They could have made their CPU architecture available to anyone willing to pay, but instead it is exclusive and 100% non-portable.
In other words, there could be some Apple in literally every device on the planet, but they decided they didn't want that -- for some reason. That is the part I don't understand. It seems like such a short-sighted play.
> Instead of being an industry leader, they seem to just want money and sticky users
But that's the job of a company...
> but they decided they didn't want that -- for some reason.
Because they are a consumer company. They depend on a strong asymmetry between their customers and them. It would be really hard for any other company to rely on Apple as a supplier. Afaik the only relationship that exists in that way are company phones, but those are not handled by Apple directly, but rather through carriers. Apple simply doesn't have any experience in being a supplier (and probably also large aversions to becoming one from their own treatment of their supply chain).
Linus Torvald's repeatedly says something very insightful about "enterprise grade hardware", he describes it as "over-priced crap that doesn't work". Which is correct in the sense of "it doesn't comply to standards and only works in one specific combination". But that's literally where the value of "enterprise" comes from. There is someone that provides an in-depth description of a single use case and the appropriate solution and sells that. It isn't supposed to work in many scenarios. It's supposed to work in one. But for that one you have to guarantee a certain quality level and if you fail that you will have to pay for that. That is simply not how Apple operates. They are the big dog. Always. That's why they broke up with Nvidia
But my point was: They didn't introduce any format for the fun of it. There always was a reason. Nearly always a technical one. Sometimes "only" a business one (which one could argue that qualifies for "for the hack of it")
Google primarily makes money from ads and user data. That’s their purpose. Everything else is ancillary and in service to that. Apple’s product is the physical hardware and software.
Apple are a hardware company. One that's deep into software because it helps them sell that hardware, but ultimately still a hardware company. Having their software running on other company's devices doesn't help them in the goal of selling more iPhones, if anything it harms that because why buy an iPhone to be able to Facetime with the family when you can by a cheaper Android device instead?
It's well known Jobs policy and strategy. "One standard port, two proprietary ports" is the version I've seen, the standard port is for ingestion and export, proprietary ports are for sharing within tight knit Apple circles.
Variants of this principle is seen everywhere throughout their systems and architectural designs, thankfully backfiring often enough that Apple isn't taking over PC any time soon.
If they do build something on their own, they have a reason. Most often technical. E.g. lightning is strictly better than any alternative that was available when they were introducing it (and that it didn't become the USB-C form factor is partially due to them wanting high licensing revenue). And really... you don't get why they created their own CPUs? Which hands down beat anything else out there on perf/watt and allow their systems to have incredible battery runtime on really tiny batteries?