No, it wasn’t the DMA that has the iPhone supporting RCS later this year; an upcoming law in China reportedly led Apple to make the change.
Last November Apple might have delivered the second biggest surprise of the year (after Huawei introduced the Mate 60 Pro and its 5G Kirin 9000s SoC) by announcing that the iPhone would support Rich Communication Services (RCS) starting sometime during the second half of 2024. Google had this on its wish list for a long time and had run high-profile ads in Times Square asking Apple to support it.
The issue is that Apple considers the iMessage platform a major iPhone selling point even though Android users messaging via the Google Messages app get the same features such as read receipts, typing indicators, end-to-end encryption, the receipt of high-quality images, and longer messages. However, the problem for both platforms is that iPhone users receive these features only when chatting with other iPhone users, and Android users only get these features when messaging other RCS users on Android.
