Google is stepping up efforts to get Apple to support the Rich Communication Services (RCS) standard in iMessage after previous integration collaboration offers weren’t heard.
With the support of GSMA, device makers and mobile operators, Google is leading RCS as a successor to SMS and a competitor to above-average messaging platforms such as WhatsApp.
RCS runs natively in vendor messaging apps including Android Messages, but Apple isn’t on board yet. It launched iMessage in 2011 with iOS 8, but the app didn’t spread beyond Apple devices like iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
Apple RCS
This means that iMessage users who want to communicate with non-iOS users need to send SMS that cannot contain multimedia, such as images, videos, and GIFs.
Google’s new “Get the message” campaign highlights the problems faced by many users related to the lack of interoperability. This includes broken group chats, no multimedia support, and the inability to communicate in the absence of a Wi-Fi connection.
“It’s not about the color of the bubbles,” the campaign reads website. (opens in a new tab) These are blurry videos, broken group chats, missing read receipts and typing indicators, no SMS over Wi-Fi, and much more. These problems exist because Apple refuses to adopt modern SMS standards when people with iPhones and Android phones text each other.
“Apple turns text messages between iPhones and Android phones into SMS and MMS, obsolete technology from the 1990s and 00s. But Apple may use RCS – the modern industry standard – for those threads instead. Solving the problem without changing calls from iPhone to iPhone and improving messages for everyone. ”