RCS support will be added to iPhone sometime in 2024
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Although Apple has only publicly stated that it will add RCS messaging support to iOS later in 2024, Google's announcement seems to clarify this.
Apple's November 2023 announcement that it will add RCS messaging support to the iPhone, with a promise to do so “later next year.” The addition, possibly forced on the company by China, is expected to take several months as Apple ignores Google's RCS in favor of working on a new version with the standards body.
Google has launched a new page dedicated to RCS messaging and has at least initially included this additional information about the fall launch.
“Apple has announced that it will adopt RCS in the fall of 2024,” Google says on its page. “Once that happens, it will mean better messaging for everyone.”
Strictly speaking, Fall 2024 will begin on September 22, which will most likely occur after the launch of the iPhone 16 Pro, and therefore the public launch of iOS 18. It is unclear whether this will be in early beta versions of iOS 18 expected at WWDC 2024.
Note also that the Google page is a series of short segments that appear to further provide more detailed information. It is so rich and there are so many such elements that this quote cannot be found by searching on the page.
It can be found in Google External Search, so a Google search for a term like “Fall 2024 site: https://www.android.com/google-messages/” will bring it up.
Therefore, it is possible that the ad is simply hidden somewhere on the page. Or it could be that the ad has since been removed and only cached older versions are showing up in Google search.
Google's new page makes it abundantly clear that “RCS stands for Rich Communication Services and is the modern standard for messaging technology.” Oddly, it doesn't mention RCS's problems or Google's previous failure to fully embrace the technology.
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