Apple is ending the RCS standard for messages in the beta of iOS 18. With the support of RCS, there is no longer any distinction between conversations between iPhones and between iOS and Android.

With the beta version of iOS 18, Apple is finally integrating the RCS standard into its operating system. This eliminates the functional disadvantage of people using Android to make calls via iMessage. The green bubble would still exist.

Apple introduced iMessage in 2011 as an alternative to SMS. iMessage messages are sent via Apple itself and offer many more options than classic text messages. When someone with an iPhone chats with an Android user via iMessage, these advanced options disappear. To indicate this, the speech bubbles in the conversation change from blue to green.

Artificially inferior

For iPhone users, the green balloons are the opposite of poor quality communication. In the early years of iMessage, there was little objection: what Apple had built was simply better. However, even with the advent of RCS (Rich Communication Services), Apple stubbornly stuck to the SMS standard for Android.

RCS is essentially an upgrade to SMS and supports similar features to iMessage. The standard SMS was slow to gain popularity but is now the norm. Unlike iMessage, RCS is also open. In other words, Apple could have taken conversations between iOS and Android within iMessage to a higher level for years, but chose not to.

Antitrust law

The practice can expect increasing criticism. Especially now that Apple is the target of numerous antitrust investigations, the artificial downgrading of messaging between iOS and Android seems untenable. Apple is now trying to prevent formal complaints by implementing RCS itself. The green balloon would remain, but would have fewer restrictions.

The change will mainly affect the USA. Not only is the iPhone more popular there, but users also send a lot of messages to each other via operator networks (and thus iMessage and SMS/RCS). In Europe, alternatives such as WhatsApp are much more popular.