The announcement of Apple's new iMessage service in iOS 5, which allows mobile device users to send MMS-like messages to each other for free, may have come as a surprise to wireless carriers, according to Daring Fireball's John Gruber and other sources. The service, which will work across both Wi-Fi and 3G, uses secure encryption and includes delivery receipts and optional read receipts -- rather a lot like Blackberry's proprietary Blackberry Messenger (BBM) service.
