Specification upgrades
 

As many of the upgrades seem to be a case of being activated via software i.e. Apple CarPlay etc when do people expect a 3rd party industry to begin, offering these activations at a lower price than the dealers?

Never.

They would have to know intimately the proprietary Volvo software and hardware platform, which Volvo would never release to the public on many reasons, the first being safety.

I don’t imagine Apple car play is just a software upgrade. There is an additional usb hard wired connection required also.

You could ask the same of Tesla, since their upgrades are software initiated.
They'd be stupid not to include measures to prevent it.

As I found out very recently, many upgrades aren't just s/w like on the older P24 platform... they really have different h/w components for the different trim levels too, and they really don't include everything in the car like the old S80/V70 ready to be just plugged in and activated :(