Apple's proprietary instant messaging service, iMessage has been in thew news lately for all the good reasons. First introduced in iOS 5 and OS X Mountain Lion, iMessage has become one of the most wanted App in Android. For many it has become one of the few reasons to stay on the iOS and not switch to an Android device.
Almost everyone expected Apple to release the iMessage for Android in the WWDC 2016 keynote. But there wasn't a peep about it and almost everyone was disappointed.
But according to Justin Uberti, one of the Google Engineers working on the Allo, Google's new chat app. If iMessage ever does come to Android it won't have the SMS feature.
This doesn't really say anything about iMessage's possible release for Android but for many SMS isn't a feature they use nowadays mainly because other IM apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, Line etc have taken over the text communication which was dominated by SMS. The more teen generation has even expanded that to Snapchat and other such apps which let you respond via Selfies, video messages and stories to express yourself to everyone you want to.
That being said, this might be one of the reasons why Apple might not ever release the iMessage Service for Android as it won't be the fulfilling app as it is on any Apple device. For any messaging app to be popular and usable in the present age has to have support for everything and people(friends & family) to use it without trying to force them to use it.
Allo for instance hasn't got the launch it required to become the dominating App mainly because of that, its features are limited and it won't support SMS either. It doesn't add anything extra (apart from Google Assistant) which begs the question why Google has split messaging into so many apps? There are about 6 instant messaging apps which are active now. Gotta Catch'em All!
With the support for RCS in the new Google Messenger 2.0 upgrade, there is hope that it will become the iMessage for Android with much more features than iMessage. For now the enhanced features are limited to the Pixel and Nexus devices and a limited set of carries which support RCS.
Messenger by Google
Allo for iOS
Allo for Android