Making WhatsApp practically obsolete: Apple and Google secure their own messaging apps.

Before messaging apps like WhatsApp conquered mobile phones, messages were sent using the built-in SMS function. Its successor, RCS, is now receiving an important addition.

When did you last send a text message? It’s probably been a while. While text messaging isn’t dead yet, its use has been declining sharply since 2012. In Germany alone, almost 60 billion messages were sent that year, but by 2023, that number had dropped to just 5.3 billion.

The official successor to SMS, Rich Communication Service (RCS), has been available since 2008, but it only became truly practical in 2024. That’s when Apple finally introduced the standard via an iOS update. This allows RCS messages to be sent across Android phones and iPhones.

However, there’s one major drawback to this day: built-in end-to-end encryption (E2E encryption) is missing. But that will soon change, and it could completely transform messenger usage.

Apple introduces E2E encryption.

For a long time, the RCS standard didn’t include end-to-end encryption at all. However, individual clients like Google Messages could implement it independently. But the responsible GSMA has improved this (RCS Universal Profile 3.0) and published a corresponding specification. Initial indications that Apple has indeed implemented the encryption were found in the iOS 26.3 beta.

The next iOS update, version 26.5, will include end-to-end encryption in RCS, but the update notes state that the feature will still be labeled as beta. It’s unclear how German mobile network operators will support it. Their support page currently lists support for RCS messages for all providers, but doesn’t explicitly mention E2E encryption.

Important: Besides a compatible phone, end-to-end encryption with RCS also requires activation of the feature by the participating carriers. Apple also states that it plans a phased rollout. Therefore, it may take some time before RCS encryption becomes more widespread.

It will be interesting to see how this changes the messenger market. Will everything stay the same because WhatsApp, Signal & Co. are already so established, or will download numbers for messenger apps decline in the future?

E2E encryption standard in messengers

End-to-end encryption is standard in most messaging apps and doesn’t need to be activated by users. WhatsApp, Signal, and Threema encrypt shared content directly on the users’ devices.

Chats are only transmitted after they are encrypted, and then decrypted again on the recipients’ devices. RCS does not yet use this secure encryption method by default.

However, this doesn’t mean that everything is transmitted in plaintext. What RCS encrypts is the data transport from the phone to the servers. This works similarly to the transport encryption of data in a browser.

However, if end-to-end encryption for RCS becomes widely available in the future, that will be good news for users. Their communication will then be more comprehensively protected, even outside of Signal, WhatsApp, and similar services. Whether this will make the established messengers obsolete remains to be seen.

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