Final November Apple might need delivered the second largest shock of the 12 months (after Huawei launched the Mate 60 Professional and its 5G Kirin 9000s SoC) by saying that the iPhone would assist Wealthy Communication Providers (RCS) beginning someday in the course of the second half of 2024. Google had this on its want checklist for a very long time and had run high-profile advertisements in Occasions Sq. asking Apple to assist it.
The difficulty is that Apple considers the iMessage platform a significant iPhone promoting level despite the fact that Android customers messaging by way of the Google Messages app get the identical options reminiscent of learn receipts, typing indicators, end-to-end encryption, the receipt of high-quality photos, and longer messages. Nevertheless, the issue for each platforms is that iPhone customers obtain these options solely when chatting with different iPhone customers, and Android customers solely get these options when messaging different RCS customers on Android.
When there’s cross-platform messaging happening, it’s completed over old-school SMS textual content which limits the size of conversations and the pictures obtained are completely low-quality at greatest. For those who’re an Android consumer and have obtained a video out of your good friend or member of the family with an iPhone, you may know precisely what we’re referring to. However as soon as Apple begins supporting RCS, these within the midst of a cross-platform chat will be capable to see high-quality photos, learn receipts, typing indicators, and longer messages.
The one distinction is that Apple would not need to assist Google’s end-to-end encryption extension used solely in chats between Google Messages customers. Apple as a substitute needs the GSMA Requirements Physique so as to add encryption to the RCS Common Profile.
So why did Apple lastly give in and assist RCS? The reply, in response to John Gruber writing in Daring Fireball, has to do with China. Some might need thought that the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) was accountable. In any case, the latter pressured Apple subsequent month to permit iPhone customers within the 27 EU member states to sideload apps, use various browser engines on the iPhone, let builders hyperlink their apps to various in-app cost platforms, and extra.
However the true perpetrator is China which is the biggest smartphone market on the planet and one the place Apple is now battling a reinvigorated Huawei. In response to Gruber, the problem is a brand new legislation that’s being thought of in China that might drive all new 5G telephones to assist RCS. And Apple, all the time conscious about who’s buttering its bread, feels prefer it should get its geese in a row in anticipation of the brand new legislation.
