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RCS adoption

svim

svim

Extreme Android User
https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/24...ng-initiative-ccmi-att-tmobile-sprint-verizon

-- So it's still a matter of baby steps going forward for RCS adoption. Could be a plus for us Android users but just between ourselves. I disagree with the article that RCS will replace SMS/MMS though. Since Apple won't allow other platforms to include support for its iMessage protocol and it won't include support for RCS into its iMessage app, the only text messaging link between Android and iPhone users will still be based solely on SMS and MMS. If Android were to drop support for SMS/MMS, that would result in no text messaging interactivity between the two platforms.
 
From the article: Apple has had precisely zero to say about it, which everybody has interpreted as code for “lol we have iMessage good luck with that RCS thing bye!”

Considering Apple only has 22% of the mobile OS market share--compared to Android's 76%--that's a rather silly attitude! :o
 
iMessage has long played an important role for Apple though: it gives someone who doesn't know how it works the impression that messaging works better on iOS and helps lock people in (especially in the years where they would not provide a way of deregistering without your iPhone, so that people who switched platforms often found that friends with iPhones couldn't message them at all and assumed it was because the new OS was defective rather than an Apple fault, and often switched back. Never forget that they knew about this for years but only offered a solution when the class actions started to progress).

If RCS were to be adopted generally it would be a cross-platform equivalent, and so remove any uniqueness iOS might have in messaging (yes, we know that many other apps do what iMessage does, but then both parties need to install the same app, while all iPhones have iMessage). And that's one fewer barrier to switching. So what motivation would Apple have for using RCS? No company cares about making life easier for its customers unless that's a way of increasing its profits.

I assume talk of Android dropping SMS/MMS support is just Verge speculation though. A lot of networks worldwide don't support RCS either, while SMS is part of the GSM standard. TBH that's the sort of move that would make me tell Google to get stuffed (along with say blocking third party launchers, making "high accuracy" location mandatory or making it impossible to disable Assistant).
 
RCS may or may not become established as the next default text messaging option but at some point an alternative to SMS and MMS has to happen. It's unavoidable. Both protocols are just too dated and neither is adequate for today's tech needs.
 
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