In a statement to a recent report, Apple spokesperson said the company believes RCS will provide better compatibility for cross-platform messaging.
“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.
“This will work alongside iMessage, which will continue to be the best and most secure messaging experience for Apple users.”
The RCS integration will improve the messaging experience between iOS and Android platforms and bring features such as read marks, text input indicators, high-quality images and videos, location sharing with others within text streams and more. Unlike regular SMS, RCS can work over both mobile data and Wi-Fi.
However, this doesn’t mean that Apple is opening up iMessage to other platforms. On the contrary, the company is rolling out RCS separately from iMessage.
RCS Messages on iOS will still be tagged with green Bubbles
While the company has confirmed the adding RCS support to iOS next year, this messaging standard between Android and iPhone users will bring a number of iMessage-style features, something remains the same — RCS message bubbles will still be green.
Apple has confirmed that blue bubbles will still be used to represent iMessages, while green bubbles will represent RCS messages. The company uses blue bubbles to denote what it believes is the best and most secure way for iPhone users to communicate, which is iMessage.
