You have to analyse every Apple announcement through the lens of how it will use it to maintain its market power and attack regulation. So, will Apple’s promised Rich Communication Services (RCS) support make iMessage fully interoperable at least with Google’s Messages? What would the most grudging compliance with Chinese 5G regulations look like?
Google apparently makes RCS support ubiquitous regardless of carrier support (via IP), as well as using a specific telco gateway. Will Apple do the same, or push individual telcos to enable RCS support on their networks? (Many already do.)
Apple won’t support Google’s end-to-end encryption extension but instead work to standardise it in RCS. How long will that take?
Trade body GSMA is responsible for the RCS standard. Telcos in the past, unlike Internet developers, have been most open to developing backdoored encryption standards for mobile communications. Will Google and Apple be able to override this here?
I haven’t tried digging out a good translation of the relevant Chinese 5G regulations, but they are allegedly the source of Apple’s change of mind on RCS support. Supporting it within a single country of course does not mean support anywhere else in the world. Many (most?) of the DMA gatekeepers are trying to limit DMA benefits to their EU users (and in Apple’s case withdrawing them once a user leaves the EU for 30 days!)
