The popular caller ID app Truecaller has long put off iPhone users because it doesn’t provide real-time caller information – a feature that Android users have been enjoying for some time. Today, that changes as the company rolls out an update that brings real-time caller ID support to iOS customers. The company was able to implement the feature because Apple introduced Live Caller ID Lookup in iOS 18, allowing third-party caller ID apps to securely make calls to the server to get information about the caller. In particular, this is also the first major release of the Swedish company after the founders Alan Mamedi and Nami Zarringhalam stepped down from daily operations in November 2024. Currently, Truecaller has more than 2.6 million paying customers, which includes only about 750,000 people on iOS. However, 40% of Truecaller’s revenue comes from iOS subscriptions. The company also achieved 5X the conversation rate for premium rates on iOS compared to Android as well as 80% higher revenue from iPhone customers. Considering the importance of the iPhone to Truecaller’s bottom line, the company continues to develop its iOS app. In 2022, Truecaller relaunched its iOS app to focus on better spam detection, as Apple allowed the app to store a larger set of numbers locally. “This improves overall phone identification. But this is not enough because in a country like India, there is a large calling activity, and not all of this is available in the offline database,” Truecaller Product Director Nakul Kabra told TechCrunch in an interview. India also presents other challenges for the company, including the arrival of the service, Calling Name Presentation (commonly called CNAP, designed to prevent spam. The service, which is currently being launched by local telecoms, may be a competitor to Truecaller. . Truecaller will also update its iOS app in 2023 with live caller ID experience, but that involves steps that require interaction with Siri and is also not real. Until iOS Release 18, Truecaller must rely on the local dictionary stored phone numbers in iOS To enable the new feature, Truecaller built a new server architecture and created a separate, encrypted database for iOS, in addition to a larger database for Android users. in reality This process is called “Homomorphic encryption,” because the computation uses encrypted data instead of decrypting it first, while decryption occurs on the client to display the caller’s information if it matches the data stored on the server. Kabra told TechCrunch that Truecaller has created a way to synchronize the two databases so that the data is synchronized between them. “Right now, there might be some delay because the request has to be queued up, and the encryption we do takes time – and it’s very expensive… But it shouldn’t be more than a few hours,” he said. . TechCrunch tested live caller ID in Truecaller’s beta program last week and found that the feature provided real-time caller information in most cases, although it sometimes missed. Truecaller’s premium tier on iOS starts at $9.99 per month, per individual, or $74.99/year. The company also offers a family plan on iOS starting at $14.99/month or $99.99/year and a Gold subscription tops out at $249 a year. Users can enable the Live Caller ID Lookup feature via iPhone Settings > Apps > Calls > Call Blocking & Identification. In iOS 18, Truecaller also updated its interface with the caller’s name appearing in bold on the number. Currently, Truecaller is working on support for images displayed on caller ID for iOS users.
