After years of pressure from major industry players, including Google and Samsung, Apple has finally decided to comply with the market, with the decision to implement support for the Rich Communication Services (RCS) messaging standard by the end of 2024 .
This position was confirmed by an Apple spokesperson in recent statements to TechRadar and 9to5Mac.
The statement comes in a context in which the company is subject to increased regulatory oversightespecially regarding issues related to the App Store, iMessage and other proprietary technologies.
This decision resolves a long discussion between iPhone and Android, crossed by numerous attempts at persuasion by Google, with an epilogue that will bring support for the RCS standard on iPhone next year.
But what is RCS?
Traditional SMS messages have written a fundamental portion of the history of mobile phones, but in 2023 they suffer from comparison with the times.
Their communications are limited to 160 characters and, as they consist merely of text, they are excluded from the possibility of including multimedia elements such as photos, videos, audio or GIFs.
Therefore, over the years, mobile devices have adopted a supporting protocol known as Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS).
However, this too has obvious limitations, among all those related to the ever-present restrictions on message size.
In addition, as is obvious considering their genesis, SMS does not offer end-to-end encryption.
RCS is the acronym for Rich Communication Services and represents a communication protocol developed by the GSM Association with the aim of overcoming the limitations of SMS, introducing advanced messaging features.
Different from SMS, RCS communication supports high-resolution multimedia sharing, group chat, real-time handwriting indicators and other features, similar to modern communication services such as iMessage or Whatsapp.
The distinctive and decisive aspect therefore consists in adhesion to an open standard accessible to all.
The RCS Universal Profile offers users the ability to take advantage of multiple features previously reserved for over-the-top messaging platforms, such as read receipts and write indicators.
It also facilitates group conversations and allows users to send high-quality multimedia files.
Since the beginning of the year, Google’s implementation of RCS has introduced end-to-end encryption by default, extending it to both individual and group chats.
Unlike SMS, RCS messages are transmitted over a mobile data connection or Wi-Fi link, with SMS functioning as a fallback option.
This suggests that the older protocol will not be obsolete any time soon, as it will continue to play a fallback role in case adequate data connections are not available.
Pressure from industry
In recent years, Google and other competitors have urged Apple to embrace the RCS protocol in order to optimize interoperability between iPhones and Android devices.
In particular, Google has conducted an extensive promotional campaign with banners, a dedicated website, and perpetual social media efforts.
Samsung has also joined this initiative; however, despite lobbying, the idea of adopting the RCS protocol was consistently rejected.
Now, however, Apple has changed its mind.
And it is important to know that messages with RCS will have green bubbles, like SMS, and that only those from iMessage will be blue.
With the European Union considering a rule to force iMessage to work on other types of phones, the adoption of the RCS protocol could be an attempt by Apple to improve interoperability between devices and mitigate criticism related to the use of the feature of proprietary messages as a tool for retaining users in its ecosystem.
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