Apple will also support RCS for messaging in the future. The company surprisingly announced this on Thursday evening. In addition to iMessage and SMS/MMS, iPhone users will in future be able to communicate with Apple’s pre-installed messaging app via the “Rich Communication Standard” for the first time.
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Over the next year, Apple will support the “RCS Universal Profile, as currently set as the standard by the GSM Association,” a company spokesperson told Mac & i. Apple believes that RCS “provides better interoperability than SMS or MMS.” The messaging app supports RCS alongside iMessage, but the in-house service remains the “best and safest messaging experience for Apple users.”
Triple messenger: iMessage, RCS, SMS
Apple’s Messages app will support three messaging services in the future, in addition to SMS/MMS and iMessage and RCS. Ultimately, this should improve messaging with Android users – especially in group chats – and enable the exchange of high-resolution photos and videos. It also supports functions that have long been a given in other messaging services, such as the read status.
Concrete details about the integration have not yet been given. According to Apple, the standard does not currently support strong encryption. They want to work with other members of the GSM Association to ensure that this becomes part of the specification one day.
Google’s desire for RCS
Google in particular has tried to build public pressure in recent years to get Apple to support RCS. Apple boss Tim Cook rejected RCS last year because “our users demand that we put a lot of energy into it,” he emphasized at a conference. It recently became known that Google and major network operators have asked the EU Commission to classify iMessage as a central platform service and thus subject it to the new rules of the Digital Markets Act. If that happens, Apple will have to ensure interoperability here too.
iMessages can only be exchanged between Apple devices and transferred to other platforms via usually obscure detours. For example, the manufacturer Nothing wants to release a messaging app for its Phone 2 on Friday with which Android users can also receive and send iMessages – via a third-party provider who you have to trust with the Apple ID password. In the USA in particular, many users continue to rely on their smartphone’s standard text messaging app instead of cross-platform messaging services such as WhatsApp, so there are always heated debates there about the difference between blue speech bubbles (iMessages) and green speech bubbles (SMS). It is not yet known what color RCS messages will be in Apple’s Messages app.
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