iPhone will support RCS messaging protocol in 2024

Apple believes that RCS will provide better interoperability than SMS or MMS. Apple spokeswoman Jacqueline Roy said that iMessage and RCS will bring the best and safest messaging experience to Apple users.

With RCS, iPhone can enable encryption support, typing indicators, read receipts, high-resolution images and videos. when sending texts between Android and iPhone devices.

However, RCS messages from Android users sent to iPhones will still be green, not blue like iMessage.

9to5Mac said that how the RCS messaging feature on iPhone works has not yet been revealed. However, Apple giving the iPhone support for the RCS messaging protocol does not mean opening iMessage to other platforms. RCS will replace SMS and MMS, and exist separately from iMessage when available.

Apple may have made this decision because it wanted to respond to legal pressure from the Digital Market Act (DMA) of the European Union (EU). In September, iMessage was investigated by the European Commission (EC) to determine whether it should be considered a "core platform service". However, Apple believes that iMessage does not qualify for those rules because it is not popular enough in Europe.

Companies like Google and Samsung have long launched campaigns to push Apple to add support for RCS, but the company has always refused.

Kareem Winters

Update 18 November 2023