I find apple is usually fighting the right battles to maintain some level of quality or moral high ground (that you may disagree with, just don’t buy their products). I’m sure there are money/margin elements to some of those too, but that’s like every company and some litigations are likely brought by people looking at taking a piece of that pie, often offering not the same value (either quality, full service, supply chain traceability,…)
Also it’s not just apple fighting this
Regarding your wife’s iPhone, drop the SIM and just use WiFi sharing from the Android phone if data is needed on the go. No point to pay for two SIMs…