Apple agrees to improve texting between iPhones and Androids | Apple

Apple plans to adopt a messaging standard that will allow for a smoother texting experience between iPhones and Android devices, long a point of contention with rival Google.

For years, Apple has refused to make its products play nice with devices not designed under its roof, a dynamic exemplified in the green background that is the hallmark of iPhone-to-Android chats.

The background is likely to stay, but Apple’s use of rich communication services (RCS) starting next year could enable read receipts between the two operating systems, as well as other features. iMessage will remain exclusive to iPhones and other Apple devices.

“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,” Apple said in a statement first reported by 9to5Mac.

Apple has been pushing back on opting into the RCS standard for years, even as Alphabet’s Google and others have pressured the iPhone maker to adopt the technology. Just last year, a reporter whose mother used an Android asked the Apple chief executive Tim Cook whether the company would improve messaging relations between the two. “Buy your mom an iPhone,” Cook quipped, adding: “I don’t see our users asking us to put a lot of energy into” adopting RCS.

With RCS, considered an industry standard for messaging, users can send and receive high-quality photos and videos, chat over wifi or cellular data and know when messages were read, among other features. By contrast, exchanging pictures and videos between Android and iPhones currently degrades the quality of the media. Messages between iPhones and Androids are not encrypted, unlike iMessages between iPhones or messages sent via WhatsApp, and thus are more vulnerable to spying.

In response to Apple’s announcement, Google said it was “happy to see Apple take their first step today by coming on board to embrace RCS”. Google also pledged to work with Apple to implement the standard.

Google ran an ad campaign for Android last year called “Get the message”, urging Apple to adopt RCS and laying the blame for the dysfunction at Apple’s feet. Android’s website for the campaign still reads: “Texting between iPhones and Android phones feels like using tech from another era, because it is – Apple refuses to adopt modern texting standards.”

The day before Apple’s announcement about RCS, the phone company Nothing announced that its Android phones would support iMessage via a new feature. The Nothing chief executive Carl Pei on Thursday afternoon declared victory on Twitter/X with a quote from the former Apple chief executive Steve Jobs in the wake of Apple’s statement.

European Union regulators also have applied pressure on Apple. Thursday was the deadline for Apple to argue to the EU that iMessage should not be considered a “core” service under the Digital Services Act. If it were deemed a core service, regulators could legally have forced Apple to open up its ecosystem.