In a tweet, Google senior vice president Hiroshi Lockheimer called on Apple to support RCS, the next generation SMS standard that should replace SMS. He offered an "open invitation to the folks who can make this right," and said, "we're here to help."
The RCS is finally beginning to gain worldwide attention. Google, its biggest advocate, eventually adopted it as the default messaging solution for Android phones after trying everything else. RCS is far from perfect, but it is superior to SMS (a low standard, of course). After striking deals with U.S. carriers to implement the standard next year, Google has set its sights on a new target: Apple.
Over the years, Apple has not responded to any inquiries from The Verge about whether it plans to support RCS on iPhone and declined to comment on the matter. It seems unlikely that RCS will come to iOS anytime soon.
Lockheimer's tweet followed a series of cheeky tweets that began with a story about how the professional golfer Bryson DeChambeau sabotaged the iMessage group chat with his green bubble. This led the official Android account to draw a comparison between the green Bubble and the famous Masters Green Jacket. Lockheimer jokes that there is a "really clear solution" (RCS) to keep group chats going.
RCS has had a long and tortuous (and incomplete) effort to become the default SMS experience on Android. Starting in March 2021, Google began striking deals with U.S. carriers to get them to commit to using Google's Android Messages app by default on all Android phones sold on their networks.
It started with a blockbuster deal with T-Mobile, followed by smaller deals with AT&T and Verizon. Once all these transactions are done, Android users who text each other will switch to RCS, which supports input indicators, better group chats, and larger multimedia messages.
Importantly, the RCS on Android Messages also supports end-to-end encryption for one-on-one chats. This means Android users will have a higher level of privacy and security when texting each other than when texting an iPhone user — and vice versa.
The recent hack of SMS's Syniverse is just the latest example of why encryption is important in messaging — especially for default Settings.
However, RCS has its own problems. As with iMessage, messages can be lost when switching phones. This is a standard that Google advocates but is in theory accepted by carriers around the world.
In the eyes of many, the Association with Google has tarnished the RCS, and of course, requiring carriers to agree on anything is at the root of the problem. As Ron Amadeo explains here, there are also technical limitations.
Still, it seems inevitable that RCS will eventually replace SMS — but only if Apple decides to support it. As more carriers adopt it, and as more users realize that SMS is inherently less secure, Apple may start to feel enough pressure to adopt RCS.However, it hasn't shown any signs of doing so.
