Apple will reportedly adopt the RCS (Rich Communication Services) messaging standard for text messaging between Android and iPhones “later next year”.
“Later next year, we will be adding support for RCS Universal Profile, the standard as currently published by the GSM Association,” an Apple spokesperson said in a statement to Apple tracker 9To5Mac.
“We believe RCS Universal Profile will offer a better interoperability experience when compared to SMS or MMS. This will work alongside iMessage, which will continue to be the best and most secure messaging experience for Apple users,” the statement added.
Through this, Android phone users will no longer have to rely on outdated technology like SMS and MMS to send text messages to iPhone users. Like iMessage, RCS also works over mobile data or WiFi and will bring similar features to cross-platform messaging like read receipts, typing indicators, high-quality media sharing and more. It is also said to allow users to share their locations within text threads.
“But at the same time, iMessage isn’t going anywhere. It will continue to be the messaging platform used for all communication between iPhone users. RCS will simply supplant SMS and MMS and exist separately from iMessage when available. SMS and MMS will also continue to be available as a fallback when needed, Apple says,” 9To5Mac added.
Apple also insists that the end-to-end encryption provided by RCS is not as strong as it is on iMessage, especially after the tech giant launched Advanced Data Protection for Messages in iCloud, offering encrypted backups.
The move is likely the result of the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), a clause which requires “gatekeepers” like Apple to make their services interoperable with other platforms.
In September, the EU also began market investigations into iMessage along with Bing, Edge and Microsoft Advertising to determine whether they qualify to be “core platform services” under the DMA. However, according to The Verge, Apple argued that iMessage isn’t popular enough in Europe for the rules to apply.
According to the European Commission, the following qualify as a core platform service: online intermediation services such as app stores, online search engines, social networking services, certain messaging services, video sharing platform services, virtual assistants, web browsers, cloud computing services, operating systems, online marketplaces, and advertising services.
Making iMessage a core platform service would mean that Apple would be forced to make it interoperable with other platforms.
Major Android smartphone makers like Samsung and Google have time and again urged — quite aggressively with the #GetTheMessage campaign — Apple to adopt RCS but to no effect. The latest one to hop on that bus was Carl Pei’s Nothing, which took things in a different direction by launching Nothing Chats that would allow Nothing Phone (2) users to use iMessage on their devices through a workaround.
When Apple does adopt RCS, it will be another brick down in the wall that it has built around its ecosystem — the first one being the Lightning port being replaced with the USB Type-C port.
The real question amidst all this is whether Android users still see the green bubble and if so will it still be inferior to the blue bubble? Will the war still go on even with the updated tech?
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