In a surprising move, Apple has announced today that it will adopt the RCS (Rich Communication Services) messaging standard. The feature will launch via a software update “later next year” and bring a wide range of iMessage-style features to messaging between iPhone and Android users.
Apple’s decision comes amid pressure from regulators and competitors like Google and Samsung. It also comes as RCS has continued to develop and become a more mature platform than it once was.
The European Union making tech better for everyone. We’ll have to wait and see if supporting RCS will be enough to prevent the EU from requiring Apple open up iMessage.
This won’t get rid of the green-not-blue text bubbles for texts from Android users, as Apple’s rationale is to differentiate between E2EE and non-E2EE messages, and Apple was very careful to say that they are using the ratified GSMA standard, which doesn’t include end-to-end encryption.
And that green text bubble is really what Google is upset about.
Maybe? I’m not the largest user of group texts, but the one time I was in one earlier this year, the missing reactions and missing texts amongst Android users was the biggest issues. So even amongst non teen groups there was some upset about the lack of all apple users. If they solve the practical reasons, I think the blue vs green will just be less of a problem.
Great post