Let’s admit it. Unless a cataclysm strikes the mobile market, the instant messaging battle is lost for anyone who doesn’t have the WhatsApp name. Other actors push hard, like Telegram, or like the Facebook Messenger of its parent company, but today WhatsApp is the standard. However, the problem can be attacked in another way. Or so Google thinks about RCS messaging.
Because before instant messaging through apps there were SMS messages. And on top of them the RCS messaging is built. That is why Google has been promoting market reform for years for these messages to become a standard throughout the world. A ‘WhatsApp without WhatsApp’. But for that to work as it should, Google needs its biggest competitor to jump on the bandwagon, and Apple is pretty clear on that. The apple company has once again said no and in a quite radical way.
Apple’s position against green messages on the iPhone
As we have said, Google needs Apple’s support for RCS messaging support to become a worldwide standard. Google itself already supports this messaging through its Google Messages app present in the vast majority of Android phones, and other major players in the market such as Samsung also support them. But Apple still refuses to do so and it has more than a few hundred million phones in circulation, more to come.
With the possibility that Apple finally decides to accept these messages in the air, Tim Cook has responded quite radically to a question received during the Vox Media Code event held yesterday. The question came from a journalist who said that his mother couldn’t see on her Android the videos that he sent her through messages. Logically, he uses Apple Messages and his mother uses Google Messages.
These messages, remember, are shown in blue color on the iPhone when they are native Messages messages. And in green color when the messages are external. That is, when they are SMS messages as such. The journalist thus consulted Tim Cook if at some point the green messages were going to become blue. That is, if Apple Messages would start accepting RCS messaging natively. To which Tim Cook replied: “Buy your mother an iPhone.”
Cook himself confirmed that Apple does not receive too many requests from users of the company to accept RCS messaging natively and, therefore, the service becomes interoperable regardless of which operating system sends or receives it. The maximum interest in this happening is, at the moment, Google. But it does not seem that Apple intends to give its arm to twist. So the RCS messages will still be on the Android side, but not on the Apple side.
