Apple provides new APIs to third-party developers in the European Union that enable cellular phone calls and SMS, MMS and RCS messaging within apps.
MacRumors passes along a report by German tech news website Heise last month, which highlighted the new APIs for making cellular phone calls and sending and receiving texts in the Short Message Service (SMS), Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) and Rich Communication Services (RCS) formats.
The APIs are only available to developers in the European Union as part of Apple’s compliance with the EU’s Digital Markets Act.
Apple now permits apps in Europe to implement cellular phone calls and SMS/MMS/RCS messaging
Although Apple supports third-party VoIP calls from apps like WhatsApp and Messenger in the built-in Phone app, carrier-based telephony and messaging services were the exclusive domain of Apple’s Phone and Messages apps.
With this change, non-Apple apps offered on the App Store in the European Union will be able to make traditional phone calls and send and receive RCS, SMS and MMS texts, which has never been possible since the iPhone’s debut 18 years ago.
The new TelephonyMessagingKit framework (currently in beta) permits third-party apps to send and receive standard-based messages via mobile networks. “TelephonyMessagingKit supports SMS, MMS and RCS messaging only on iPhone devices,” notes the developer documentation on Apple’s website released as part of the WWDC25 announcements.
The framework has no functionality in iPad apps, iOS apps running on the Vision Pro, Mac apps running on Apple silicon, or Mac apps built with Catalyst.
However, iPhone owners in the EU will need to set a third-party app as their default dialer or carrier messaging app to be able to make cellular phone calls as well as send and receive SMS, MMS and RCS messages. “People using such apps must have an account registered in the European Union, and their device must be located within the EU,” Apple notes.
Apple is unlikely to bring these capabilities, long offered on Android, to the United States and the rest of the world unless compelled by regulatory scrutiny.