“It’s not about the color of the bubbles. It’s the blurry videos, broken group chats, missing read receipts and typing indicators, no texting over Wi-Fi, and more.” This was Google’s opening statement on its “Get The Message” website that lays out a familiar set of arguments for why Apple should support the new messaging RCS standard. RCS stands for Rich Communications Standard.
The search giant is kicking off a new publicity campaign today to pressure Apple into adopting RCS, the cross-platform messaging protocol that’s meant to be a successor to the aging SMS and MMS standards.
User’s chats are seen as green bubbles when chatting with iOS users that signify messages to Android users in Apple’s Messages app. While the iPhone app uses Apple’s own iMessage service to send texts between iPhones (complete with modern features like encryption, support for group chats, and high-quality image and video transfers), they revert to old-fashioned SMS and MMS when texting an Android user. Not only are these messages shown in a color-clashing green bubble but also they break many of the modern messaging features people have come to rely on.
To fix these messaging issues, Google has been dropping a series of not-so-subtle hints in recent months for Apple to support RCS, which offers most (though not all) of the features of iMessage in a protocol that’s usable across both iOS and Android. The company said it hoped “every mobile operating system… upgrades to RCS” onstage at its annual developer conference this year.
Apple clearly has a lot to lose than gain from the current situation, which has a lock-in effect on customers. It provides seamless communication (but only between iMessage users) and turns Android’s green bubbles into subtle class markers. It’s why Apple execs admitted in internal emails that bringing iMessage to Android would “hurt [Apple] more than helping us.”
Google’s RCS efforts had improved since 2019 as most networks are supporting globally. This year even saw the world’s largest Android manufacturer, Samsung, switch to using Google’s own RCS-compatible Messages app by default in its flagship Galaxy S22 range. Most network service providers in Africa have however been slow in adopting this new messaging standard. This is could be mainly due to the fact that SMS service is still raking in a lot of revenue for telecom companies– coupled with the fact that most messaging happens via third-party apps like WhatsApp and Snapchat.
At launch, RCS lacked several security features which lead to its slow adoption. It now supports end-to-end encryption (E2EE) in one-on-one chats, and E2EE in group chats is due later this year. What remains is whether Google’s new publicity campaign will finally be the thing that pushes Apple to see the light and roll out RCS support on its phones. Honestly, Apple’s adoption of RCS feels about as likely as us ditching WhatsApp and moving to iMessage. #Unlikely.
