Android mascots are lined up within the demonstration space on the Google I/O Builders Convention within the Moscone Heart in San Francisco.
Beck Diefenbach | Reuters
Google, the developer of the Android, is rising the strain on Apple to undertake RCS, a next-generation commonplace for textual content messaging.
It argues that Apple’s help of RCS would assist forestall a few of the issues that come up when iPhone customers textual content with Android homeowners. Presently, photos and video do not present as clearly as they may, for instance, and texts cannot be despatched over Wi-Fi networks.
Google executives have urged that Apple will not help RCS as a result of its personal system, iMessage, helps the Cupertino firm retain iPhone customers by locking them into the Apple ecosystem.
In an internet site and publicity marketing campaign on Tuesday, Google blamed Apple for making a substandard expertise when iPhones textual content Android telephones or vice versa.
“We’re hoping that Android customers cease being blamed for ruining chats,” Google international vp for built-in advertising for platforms, Adrienne Lofton, stated. “That is Apple that’s accountable, and it is time to personal the duty.”
The marketing campaign is a notable escalation in an ongoing compatibility spat between the 2 firms that dominate software program for smartphones. Practically all smartphones on the planet both run Android or Apple’s iOS, and Apple’s iPhone has over 55% of the U.S. market, based on StatCounter.
Google desires Apple to help the RCS “commonplace,” or specs that enable many various firms corresponding to carriers or telephone makers to develop apps that may ship and obtain RCS messages. Many Android telephones have already got built-in messaging apps that help RCS.
A key battleground
Messaging providers have turn out to be a key battleground for tech giants as a result of if a person’s contacts all use the identical service, then the person is “locked-in” and fewer more likely to change to a different platform or app.
Fb guardian Meta, which owns WhatsApp, has stated that it competes immediately with Apple due to how extensively used iMessage is in the USA. Messaging has additionally drawn consideration from some policymakers who’re pushing to power competing providers to work with one another beneath truthful competitors guidelines.
Hiroshi Lockheimer, a Google senior vp in command of Android, stated earlier this 12 months that Apple is utilizing its personal textual content messaging platform to lock in its prospects, referring to inside Apple emails that have been made public throughout a lawsuit final 12 months that confirmed senior Apple executives taking pictures down proposals to carry an iMessage app to Android.
“I’m involved iMessage on Android would merely serve to take away an impediment to iPhone households giving their youngsters Android telephones,” present Apple senior vp in command of software program Craig Federighi wrote in 2013, based on an e-mail.
Apple’s iMessage is barely totally different from different messaging providers as a result of it’s the default textual content messaging app on the iPhone.
Apple’s programs detect when an iPhone texts one other iPhone and, as a substitute of sending that message by the SMS system, it makes use of Apple’s personal proprietary iMessage community. Customers see the textual content they despatched as a “blue bubble,” versus the inexperienced shade seen on SMS texts, like these to Android customers. The inferiority of “inexperienced bubble” texts has turn out to be a meme and impressed a track by the musician Drake.
iMessage chats present a greater person expertise than SMS chats on an iPhone. Lots of Apple’s options, like including emoji reactions to a single textual content message, barely work on SMS chats. iMessage chats really feel sooner due to Apple’s animations and embody options like bubbles that point out whether or not a person is typing, and superior group chat administration.
Apple continues to tell apart iMessage from SMS by new options, like the power to unsend or edit messages, which can be launched this fall.
Inexperienced bubbles
Inexperienced and blue bubbles.
Pattonmania | Istock | Getty Photographs
Google says that it would not need Apple to carry iMessage to Android, however that it desires Apple to help RCS, which was developed by a bunch of wi-fi carriers and different tech firms to be an enchancment to the SMS and MMS programs which have been in place for many years.
Google’s marketing campaign on Tuesday emphasizes that RCS help for iPhones would enable a number of new options when an iPhone person texts an Android person, together with higher-resolution images, the power to ship texts over Wi-Fi, and the power to show learn receipts.
Google additionally says that RCS messages are encrypted whereas SMS messages should not, which means that the brand new commonplace is extra non-public.
“If [Apple] adopted the platform, it permits shoppers to take pleasure in issues like high-res images and video sharing, learn receipts, wealthy reactions,” Lofton stated. “And this is a crucial one — higher safety and privateness with encryption.”
However SMS just isn’t essential for messaging in lots of markets and Google’s marketing campaign is concentrated on the U.S. market. In lots of nations, customers textual content by apps corresponding to WhatsApp or Telegram or WeChat.
In reality, Google really useful in its marketing campaign on Tuesday that customers might already obtain Sign or WhatsApp, declaring that these free apps are as safe as RCS guarantees to be.
Apple has remained silent on RCS and continues so as to add options to iMessage, which solely works on iPhones and different Apple merchandise. Apple did not reply to a request for remark.