Apple has announced that iMessage will support RCS in 2024. The announcement rocked the tech world, but, in hindsight, it really shouldn’t have. With Nothing announcing iMessage for their Nothing phones, and the threat of other phone carriers following suit, Apple’s options appeared limited. They could either accept that iMessage security has been compromised and no iMessage will be safe again, or they could create iMessage for Android. There was a third option. iMessage for Android would have pulled the rug out from under third party iMessage forwarding apps, making them pointless. However, there was another way to do this: bring RCS to iMessage. By doing so, they close the gap, making messages with Android users a little less obnoxious, while still keeping iMessage on iOS. The end result might allow some green bubbles back into the group chat, but will keep iMessage on top.
But will it be enough to protect the standard, or will the threat of insecure iMessage forwarding solutions still loom over the text message replacement service Apple created? Is RCS good enough to appease iPhone users? Or will the allure of the blue bubble be too strong, leaving demand for insecure forwarding services?
What does RCS even offer, you might ask. And that’s a surprisingly good question.
What Does RCS Offer?
“Later next year, we will be adding support for RCS Universal Profile, the standard as currently published by the GSM Association.”
– Apple Spokesperson Jacqueline Roy, via The Verge
RCS, or “Rich Communication Services” is a standardized protocol through the GSM Association (GSMA). The goal is to create an improved text messaging system that incorporates many of the popular features of chat apps like iMessage, WhatsApp, or Signal. It features typing indicators, read receipts, and high resolution photos and videos. SMS or the image service, MMS, do not offer anything like this, making it a vast improvement on the current texting standard.
By supporting RCS, iOS users won’t have such a terrible experience texting Android users. Apple’s even adding the ability to share location over RCS messages. However, one aspect Apple won’t implement is encryption. Apple says the encryption protocols in place for RCS do not yet meet their standards for iMessage. However, they’ll work with the GSMA to create a new universal encryption standard. Currently, Google built their own extension to RCS that works only in their own Messages app. Apple’s proposal would work as a core part of the RCS standard, and therefore be available on all devices and applications that support RCS. Basically, Apple not only pledged to support RCS, but to also make it better for everyone.
RCS is currently supported on the largest U.S. networks, with support reaching most cellular customers in the United States. However, adoption of RCS has taken more time.
Blue vs. Green Forever
“Yeah while this is great, it doesn’t solve the blue bubble vs. green bubble issue”
– Carl Pei, Nothing CEO
Green bubbles aren’t going away though. Because iMessage still supports more features than the RCS protocol can, including end-to-end encryption with encrypted backups, RCS will only replace SMS/MMS in current messaging. That does mean that text from green bubble senders won’t be as bad as they are now, but it does mean they still won’t be as good or as secure as iMessages. The green/blue divide is a bit smaller, but it’s not going away. Still, there will be less reason to groan every time you find out a contact is on an Android device, ruining your group chats or sending heavily compressed images. Instead, the messaging service will be a lot closer to what iOS users want from iMessage.
The reputation of the green bubble may not be something Android can escape. 87% of U.S. teens own an iPhone, and part of that is because of iMessage. No one wants to be the green bubble, ruining group chats and sending lousy messages. Snobbery over the green/blue divide may still drive iPhone sales, as could the potential for bullying. Other users may still be concerned that RCS messages won’t be encrypted until likely 2025 at the very earliest. However, anyone interested in privacy should move the group chat to Signal, as even iMessage is far from perfect when it comes to privacy and security. It may be better than WhatsApp and other messaging services, but Signal is still the privacy leader.
Is iMessage Saved?
The EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) has an “interoperability rule” that may force messaging apps to support messages sent by other apps. One possible workaround could be something like iMessage has already implemented: fallbacks. Users can send iMessages to each other, but it falls back to SMS currently. This doesn’t support all the features of DMA’s interoperability rule. However, RCS might. RCS might be enough that Apple can claim interoperability with other messaging services, without having to adopt or create a new messaging standard.
As for whether or not iMessage is coming to Android, that’s less likely now than ever. Nothing Chat’s partnership with Sunbird may bring iMessages to Android devices, but it also could potentially introduce horrible security and privacy concerns to the platform. However, by implementing RCS, Apple has taken away a large chunk of demand for iMessage on Android. There will still be the green/blue divide, but it may have shrunken enough that Android users won’t be willing to take the potential privacy risk in using a service like Nothing Chat, Sunbird, Beeper, or other iMessage relaying services that could open up security flaws in iMessage. The demand will fall, and with revenue models of apps like Sunbird in question, it’s hard to see how they could ever become large enough to topple iMessage that supports RCS.
In other words, iMessage may be safe, for now.
Sources:
- Ed Hardy, Cult of Mac
- Wesley Hilliard, AppleInsider
- Chance Miller, 9to5Mac, [2]
- Emma Roth, The Verge
- Adamya Sharma, Android Authority