Apple forays into India’s business messasging segment with Reliance Jio

Mumbai: Reliance Jio has introduced new pricing for rich communication services (RCS) messaging for businesses following partnership with Apple to extend RCS support for iOS users since the start of September. With this, Apple has formally entered India’s business messaging market alongside Google, posing a challenge to WhatsApp’s dominant position in the rich, two-way messaging segment.

Until now, RCS on iPhones was limited to person-to-person (P2P) communication. Apple and Google made the messaging standard interoperable between iOS and Android globally. ET was the first to report in India in August 2025 that Apple had partnered with Jio to bring RCS to iPhone users. However, brands will also be able to send application-to-person (A2P) messages—including marketing,