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Google Pressures Apple to Use RCS Protocol

August 11, 2022

As reported by The Register, most of the mobile communications world uses Rich Communications Services (RCS) for text messages, but not Apple. Apple uses its proprietary iMessage protocol to communicate between iPhones. When an iPhone user wants to communicate with someone outside of the Apple ecosystem, older technology is used. We’ve all seen it. Green text bubbles when communicating across platforms and blue text bubbles when playing in the Apple only clubhouse. “Texting between iPhones and Android phones use SMS and MMS, outdated systems from the 90’s and early 00’s. The result is a poor experience – they do not support modern texting features like end-to-end encryption, high quality media sharing, read receipts, typing indicators and more.” There’s even a website designed to pressure Apple’s adoption of RCS.

RCS now includes end-to-end (E2E) encryption, so Apple’s old argument is dead. Without RCS, Android to Apple communications are not E2E encrypted. The Register has asked Apple to comment on the feet dragging non-response. Shocker. After all, Apple appears to be more interested in holding users hostage to its ecosystem as documented in the Epic Games v. Apple trial. “In 2016, when a former Apple employee commented that ‘the #1 most difficult [reason] to leave the Apple universe app is iMessage . . . iMessage amounts to serious lock-in’ to the Apple ecosystem, [then head of worldwide marketing Phil] Schiller commented that ‘moving iMessage to Android will hurt us more than help us, this email illustrates why.”

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