Could Contact Posters evolve for use in branded calling?

You may have noticed a new feature, Contact Posters, coming in iOS 17. We noticed some similarities with branded calling. Could Apple or third-party developers adapt this technology to branded calling sometime in the future? Let’s have a look.

Apple describes this feature in their iOS 17 preview as a way to customize what people see when called.

Capabilities

There are four types of Contact Posters:

  1. Camera, to take a new photo and use it for the poster,
  2. Photos, to use an existing photo,
  3. Memoji, to use an existing Memoji or create a new one,
  4. Monogram, to use text that you provide.

The software allows you to choose options for cropping, colors, and fonts. Users can create and save multiple Contact Posters. There are options to either share a Contact Poster automatically with contacts or always ask on a call-by-call basis.

When a caller creates and uses a Contact Poster, then it can be sent to people they call who are also using iPhones.

Current limitations

  • The calling and called device must be iPhones running iOS 17.
  • The calling and called parties must have enabled Contact Poster sharing.
  • The caller must create and deploy a Contact Poster.

Could the Contact Poster framework be extended to branded calling?

To our knowledge, Apple has not mentioned Contact Posters in the context of branded calling. We just noticed a striking similarity between these use cases.

Branded calling is also intended to enable callers to customize what people see when receiving their calls. Contact Posters and branded calling share the same purpose.

One obvious limitation is that Contact Posters is intended for individual users, not enterprise callers. Another restriction is that both the caller and called parties must use an iPhone with iOS 17 or higher.

Still, Apple engineers have developed the underlying software architecture to support the transmission of a customized calling card. The platform is ready.

In Apple’s WWDC 2023 presentation, Craig Federighi mentioned that Contact Posters will be supported from the iOS CallKit SDK (Software Development Kit). This means that third-party developers will be able to create iOS applications that leverage Contact Poster capabilities.

We’ll be watching this one.

More information

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