Clearly there are some people who value iMessage, for whatever reason. I have to imagine there are also plenty of people like myself who have been using the iPhone since version 4 simply because it's the best phone I've ever used, period. And the user experience of my iPhone + Macbook + Airpods just makes my life easier and more enjoyable in a lot of ways.
And I use iMessage because it's how I 'text' people, similar to how I used to text people on my Blackberry and my Razr and my Nokia before chat apps were a thing. I don't want to download chat apps - I just use what's convenient which is iMessage and it works great for my use case.
There is the personal story told of “I use to use Nokia and Razer and they were good, but I’ve been using Apple products for the last 11 years and I like them a lot” which is a story about brand loyalty developing in an article about an article about Apple developing brand loyalty in American teens. Combine that with the ~9% brand name usage in the textblock and the whole thing stuck out to me.
And I use iMessage because it's how I 'text' people, similar to how I used to text people on my Blackberry and my Razr and my Nokia before chat apps were a thing. I don't want to download chat apps - I just use what's convenient which is iMessage and it works great for my use case.