For some time now, Google has been attempting to persuade Apple to undertake the RCS customary. To this date, Apple has firmly chosen to remain inside its iMessage walled backyard. Lately, the Senior Vice President of Platforms and Ecosystems at Google spoke about RCS, its development, and iMessage.
In a dialog with 9to5Google, Hiroshi Lockheimer delved into the subject of RCS. Throughout the speak, Lockheimer reminisced in regards to the historical past, explaining how the GSMA approached Google to deliver help to RCS. This assist was essential as carriers — like Verizon and AT&T — all had their very own plans on find out how to implement the usual. He additionally touched on how Google realized it may speed up RCS adoption by letting customers “get this expertise by downloading an app fairly than ready for one thing they couldn’t management to occur.”
As for the present state of RCS, Lockheimer stated that the variety of individuals utilizing Google’s RCS service has grown lots since final yr. In response to 9to5Google, that quantity was 500 million as of Google I/O 2022. Lockheimer additionally said that Google isn’t attempting to exchange different messaging apps, it simply needs one thing higher than the outdated SMS system to be the default.
Our analysis exhibits that the everyday particular person makes use of 3 to 4 messaging apps, whether or not that’s WhatsApp or Snap. That’s nice. We’re not attempting to construct RCS into the one app to rule all of them.
The dialogue appeared to finish with Lockheimer expressing how he feels about iPhone customers who’re caught within the center:
Because you talked about Apple, I’ll simply point out, they discuss how privateness is a human proper and the way vital that’s to them. I really feel like, “look right here’s a know-how that’s out there now…” Now I simply really feel dangerous for the iPhone customers who’re going to expertise the degraded options, it might be nice if they might deliver that to them. And higher safety for them as effectively. You understand Android customers are effective, they’re texting one another with complete safety and all that stuff, and now it’s form of weird as a result of now after they work together with iPhone’s we’re going to should take care of a degraded safety expertise.
On the finish of the day, Apple may all the time change its thoughts about RCS. But it surely doesn’t appear to be that can occur anytime quickly, whilst strain grows from tech fanatics and different members of the trade.
