Affiliate links on Android Authority may earn us a commission.Learn more.
You told us: Here’s what Apple should do for Android users in iMessage
August 07, 2025
Google criticized Apple this week fortaking advantageof the “green bubble” phenomenon in iMessage, following aWall Street Journalreport on the iPhone’s dominance among teens in the US. The article also revealed how Apple’s handling of Android users in iMessage resulted in peer pressure for affected users to switch to an iPhone.
Google subsequently said that it wants Apple to adopt the more modernRCS standardfor Android users in iMessage. But what doAndroid Authorityreaders think Apple should do? We posed this question on Monday and here’s how you voted.
What should Apple do with iMessage and Android?
The poll was posted inside our news story on Monday, with almost 1,500 votes tallied as of writing. And it turns out that almost 45% of respondents want Apple to enable RCS messaging for Android users in iMessage.
This is in line with Google’s wishes and a neat idea. A big issue with how iMessage handles Android users is that it falls back to the archaic SMS standard, which doesn’t cope well with modern messaging features. Meanwhile, RCS brings high-quality multimedia sharing, location sharing, end-to-end encryption for individual chats, and plenty more contemporary features. RCS isn’t perfect though, but it’s definitely a more capable solution than SMS.
More reading:The best messaging and chat apps on Android
The second-most popular choice in our poll was simply “I don’t care because I use a different app,” earning ~28% of the vote. This doesn’t necessarily mean that only 28% of polled readers use a different messaging app. After all, a reader could’ve voted for one of the other options while still using an alternative messaging app.
Meanwhile, ~23% of respondents said they wanted Apple to bring iMessage to Android. This was indeed mooted by some within Apple itself back in 2013, as internal emails show. We doubt this will happen any time soon, but it would be the best decision on paper. Although we’d bet that the Android experience would lack a few features found on the iOS app.
Finally, just under 4% of polled readers say Apple should bring iMessage to the web. A web-based alternative wouldn’t be ideal in terms of offline access, and it would likely lack some functionality compared to a native app. But it would be a sensible way for Apple to bring iMessage to Android, Windows, and other platforms without developing a native app for each one. After all, Apple releasedFacetime for the weblast year.
Thanks for voting in our poll and leaving a comment. Do you think Apple will ever implement RCS in iMessage? Are you an RCS user? Sound off in the comments below.
Thank you for being part of our community. Read ourComment Policybefore posting.
