Google wants to replace the ancient Short Message Service (SMS) with the communication protocol known as Rich Communication Services (RCS), claiming it to be more capable and secure. But it won’t gain widespread adoption and become a standard without the support of a major rival: Apple.
Hiroshi Lockheimer, a senior vice president at Google, in an October 8 tweet lamented over how group chats would break, referring to the how end-to-end encryption would fail whenever a non-RCS compliant message becomes part of a group chat. With Android-to-Android messaging, it’s fully encrypted. But Android-iMessage communication is less secure.
Hence, Lockheimer in the same tweet gave an “open invitation to folks who can make this right” via a tweet, naturally referring to the bigwigs at Apple. He suggests there is a “Really Clear Solution,” but with iMessage already a huge success for iPhone and iPad users, it’s quite unlikely that Apple give support for RCS.