Samsung ad urges Apple to embrace RCS for seamless messaging

Samsung is joining Google’s RCS (Rich Communication Services) fight against Apple. The world’s largest smartphone company has just released a 20-second ad taking a dig at Apple for not adding RCS support to iPhones. The short video highlights the problems faced by Android and iOS users when messaging across the two platforms.

Samsung ad pressurizes Apple to bring RCS to iPhones

Titled “Green bubbles and blue bubbles want to be together,” the new ad from Samsung is published on its YouTube channel. It features a conversation between Romeo and Juliet. “I hate that it has to be like this…can you just talk to your parents?” Romeo tells Juliet, referring to the lack of RCS support on iPhones. She replies, “I tried but they want to keep us apart. I just don’t understand.”

The conversation continues with Romeo saying, “What did green ever do to them? We’re bubbles too.” To which Juliet responds, “And literally everyone wants us to be together. Ugh.” With this ad, Samsung is highlighting how the lack of RCS on iPhones makes cross-platform conversations less fun. Messages sent from Android to iOS and vice versa rely on the old SMS and MMS standards.

As such, these conversations miss out on modern features such as typing indicators, read receipts, and end-to-end encryption. Moreover, Apple differentiates messages sent from Android to iOS by showing them in green bubbles in iMessage (blue bubbles for iPhone-to-iPhone messages). Conversations don’t feel inclusive. Samsung wants to “help Apple #GetTheMessage” through this short video on YouTube.

Google launched the “Get The Message” campaign in August 2022

The hashtag “#GetTheMessage” that Samsung has used here refers to a campaign that Google launched more than a year ago. In August 2022, the Android maker launched a website for the campaign through which it provides solutions for this messaging mess. It outlines how Apple could make messaging between Android and iOS more interoperable with RCS.

Over the past couple of years, Google has taken numerous such digs at Apple, some of which have been far less subtle than this one from Samsung. It even put up a massive billboard highlighting this problem at CES 2023 in January. However, the iPhone maker hasn’t budged. It remains to be seen if Samsung’s push changes things. Or maybe the only way to make Apple bring RCS to iPhones is through new laws and regulations requiring the company to support competing messaging platforms on iPhones. We shall find out in due course.