In a surprising move, Apple has announced today that it will adopt the RCS (Rich Communication Services) messaging standard. The feature will launch via a software update “later next year” and bring a wide range of iMessage-style features to messaging between iPhone and Android users.
Apple’s decision comes amid pressure from regulators and competitors like Google and Samsung. It also comes as RCS has continued to develop and become a more mature platform than it once was.
Google Messages use nothing that regular app could not use. They can be installed on older OS versions without a problem. Yet, we cannot implement our own RCS app on Android until Google create an API for third-party developers.
So, Google can develop RCS app for Android, but other companies can’t. Even if their app is on the same level as any other app. It is really fishy.
RCS may have open spec, but at the end of the day we would connect via the Internet to servers that mostly Google hosts for carriers. At this point why even bother with Google and carriers and not just use purely Internet based, more feature-rich standards we have for decades?
Beeper app for example has RCS support. It works by using Android emulator with Google Messages installed… Yeah.