For what it’s worth these mDL providers are the people already contracted to provide the services for the government to manage the IDs and the IT system for the DMV. They were part of the ISO standardization body for mDL. Not sure California’s choice pressured Apple so much as it being an international standard that had support from the governing bodies in Europe, UK, North America and Japan (met all of them there).
Apple wasn’t there when I was and even broader Google joined about 6 months after I left Google in 2015 (I was just proactive about seeing the standard coming) but the big players hopped on board later in the process.
We were all also acutely aware of the privacy implications and making sure the bodies would sign records of >18, >21 to avoid having to share too much info (pre ZKproofs being more widely accepted recognized).
Apple wasn’t there when I was and even broader Google joined about 6 months after I left Google in 2015 (I was just proactive about seeing the standard coming) but the big players hopped on board later in the process.
We were all also acutely aware of the privacy implications and making sure the bodies would sign records of >18, >21 to avoid having to share too much info (pre ZKproofs being more widely accepted recognized).