Apple iPhones to Support RCS Messaging Standard Starting From Next Year: Officially Announced
Apple has now officially announced that the brand will be adopting the Rich Communication Services(RCS) standard for messaging in its iPhone devices from next year. It has also been added that iMessage will still be available on the devices separately.
Read more about it below.
Apple to Adopt RCS Messaging Standard
As is known, Apple had initially rejected the idea of adopting the RCS messaging standard to its devices and this decision to finally implement it follows the pressure that Apple had been suffering from other competitors like Samsung and Google.
The company still hasn’t changed from the belief that iMessage is more secure than RCS and has even stated that RCS still doesn’t support encryption which is as strong as Apple’s iMessage. On iPhone devices, RCS will just be introduced to supplant SMS and MMS, and iMessage is to remain the standard messaging platform for communication between iPhone users.
Speaking of the other reason why Apple has decided to adopt RCS, is because of the interoperability it will offer, enabling cross-platform messaging. RCS implementation will also allow iPhone users to share their location in text threads, and it will also work with mobile data or over a Wi-Fi network, unlike normal SMS.
In addition, features like read receipts, typing indicators, and many other iMessage style features will be brought to cross-platform messaging between iPhones and Android by RCS, and Apple will itself work with the members of the GSM Association to further improve RCS protocol, particularly in terms of security and encryption.
Apple will only be bringing the support for RCS later next year to its iPhone devices, and it will be made available via a software update.
Later next year, we will be adding support for RCS Universal Profile, the standard as currently published by the GSM Association. We believe RCS Universal Profile will offer a better interoperability experience when compared to SMS or MMS. This will work alongside iMessage, which will continue to be the best and most secure messaging experience for Apple users, said an Apple spokesperson.
