This week, Samsung released a new AD on YouTube that joins Google’s ongoing “Get The Message” AD campaign calling on Apple to adopt RCS, claiming that “Green bubbles and blue bubbles want to be together.”
The 30-second AD tries to borrow the story of Romeo and Juliet, and in this case, the iPhone user is Juliet and the Android user is Romeo. What the AD means is that Juliet’s parents won’t let her communicate with Romeo through RCS, they can only communicate through green bubbles. “What did green ever do to them? We’re bubbles too,” one of them asks.
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Following Google’s Footsteps
Google has previously repeatedly teased Apple iMessage for not supporting RCS rich text messaging services. At its I/O conference in May, Google claimed that more than 800 million people around the world use RCS “texting,” but that doesn’t include Apple iPhone users.
RCS is a new open SMS messaging standard created by Google to replace SMS messaging. While Google has been promoting RCS for every Android user, Apple has never seemed open to the idea of adopting RCS on iOS. Probably, that’s because Apple already has iMessage, its alternative to SMS, which is only available on Apple devices.
“Get the Message” Campaign
Google has launched a new “Get The Message” website that makes a series of familiar arguments around smoother messaging between iphones and Android devices as to why Apple should support the standard. And, of course, there’s a #GetTheMessage hashtag to really make these go viral.
Google’s long-running “Get The Message” AD campaign doesn’t seem to be having any effect, and Apple has shown no signs of supporting RCS, instead continuing to use basic SMS and iMessage.
When a user asked about RCS last year, complaining that his mother can’t see the videos he sends her, we found that it all comes down to a lack of interoperability between iMessage and RCS. Both messaging systems that could allow higher-quality images and videos — if they worked together.
Apple Says Buy an iPhone Instead
If you’ve tried to send a video from Android to iOS (or vice versa) using your regular text messaging app, then you know that your videos come out completely fuzzy on the other end. Cook’s suggestion to fix this annoying issue? “Buy your mom an iPhone.”However it might be forced to open up its messaging service as a result of the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). Regulators are currently investigating whether iMessage meets the bar to be considered a “core platform service” under the rules, which would compel Apple to offer interoperability with other messaging services.
