Google held 2023 I / O Developers Conference today, announcing a lot of new things for Android and Pixel products. In the keynote speech, Google once again emphasized that Apple did not provide support for the RCS (Note: Rich Communication Suite, integrated communication) messaging protocol on the iPhone.
RCS is a new open messaging standard created by Google to replace SMS text messaging. While Google has been pushing RCS for every Android user, Apple never seemed open to the idea of adopting RCS on iOS, and that’s because Apple already has iMessage, its alternative to SMS, available only on Apple used on the device.
Apple’s rejection of RCS ultimately affects conversations between iPhone and Android users using their respective devices’ default messaging apps. At today’s I/O conference, Google said more than 800 million people around the world are using RCS services.
Last year, when a customer asked about RCS that she couldn’t send certain videos to her mother because she had an Android phone, Apple CEO Tim Cook said “you can buy your mom an iPhone.” Tim Cook also said he didn’t see Apple users asking for “a lot of energy to put into this.” In the US, where iMessage is very popular, allowing iPhone users to send RCS could end up hurting iPhone sales.
Bringing RCS to the iPhone would bring many benefits to users — not just interoperability between iOS and Android, but also because RCS has end-to-end encrypted messages, while SMS does not. However, according to a report from Bloomberg in December 2022, Apple still has no plans to adopt RCS in its devices.
