The mobile industry is excited about RCS, the smart replacement for the 25-year-old SMS. But the industry has been here before, warns Alan Burkitt-Grey, and there are still details to iron out, like the business model and whether Apple will join.
Google has kicked off the mobile industry's latest attempt to build a successor to SMS text messaging and, more importantly for mobile carriers, a rival to Apple's iMessage, as well as Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, WeChat, WhatsApp, and the rest: services the mobile industry still thinks are robbing them of their revenue and customers.
The problem is that people in the messaging industry are still unclear about the revenue model for the so-called Rich Communications Service (RCS), which is expected to launch in 2018.
Some believe RCS will be best for person-to-person (P2P) messaging; others say its strength will be in person-to-person (A2P) messaging. Some argue it will be an alternative to the mobile web, for finding local pizzerias or buying tickets. Others hope it will become the new medium for mobile payments. Receiving SMS messages is usually free, but no one is sure the same applies to RCS. This is a clue, if ever you needed one, that there isn't a clearly developed business model yet. Dean Bubley, a notoriously cynical commentator at Disruptive Analysis, tells Capacity: "It's putting the cart before the horse."
I phoned Bubley after posting on LinkedIn a list of reasons why she was happy not to go to the Mobile World Congress (MWC) this year in Barcelona. "What, RCS zombies again?" he wrote.
That “again” refers to RCS’s last outing at MWC, in February 2013, when the GSMA, the trade association that runs the event, launched it under the name Joyn, with the hope of it going global.
Orange soon had Joyn in France, but I checked in August 2013 and it was still being shunned by the three rival French operators. In Germany, Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone had adopted Joyn in August, but not O2 or E-Plus, then owned by KPN. There was better news from Spain, where Orange, Vodafone, and Telefónica's Movistar offered Joyn, and from South Korea, where KT, LG U+, and SK Telecom were all enthusiastic.
But that was it, and the industry left Joyn silently disappear. Go to joynus.com, once the Joyn official website and the RCS services directory, and you will come to the GSMA home page. Orange.com/Joyn takes you to the regular Orange home page. Nothing to see here: George Orwell couldn't have done better.
"RCS has been around for so long and hasn't gotten anywhere," is how Nick Lane, mobile insights analyst at Mobilesquared, sums up the story so far. But five years have passed, and something has changed. "Google has had a long succession of attempts to craft its own messaging, but they've largely been lame," Bubley says.
“Google is taking over and integrating it with Android messaging. "
Greg Collins
Apple has its own rich messaging service, iMessage, for its iOS operating system, but Google's Android has nothing like it. I still have the Google Hangouts app on my phone, which once handled SMS as well as voice and video calls, but the SMS feature disappeared in late 2016. That's because, in 2015, Google acquired a New York company, Jibe, for an undisclosed sum with the idea that it might reboot its messaging effort.
"Google is taking on the role and integrating it with Android messaging," says Greg Collins, founder of market intelligence firm Exact Ventures. "It's still early days."
Google has industry support, says Joanne Lacey, COO of the Mobile Ecosystem Forum (MEF, but not the former Metro Ethernet Forum, which shares its initials). She lists "two or three carriers," as well as the GSMA and specifically Samsung, as organizations that "should be included in the revival."
Gregory Hoy,
RCS messaging product management director at OpenMarket, says T-Mobile US and Vodafone are prominent supporters. Others indicate that Orange has significant influence behind the scenes.
There's some uncertainty in the industry about how RCS will be introduced. Some believe it could be added to mobile phones as part of an over-the-air system update, but mostly it will be implemented when people buy new phones. "Vodafone has an RCS-compatible client on most [new] handsets," says Hoy. "Google has slowly been introducing RCS to Android messaging and is signing up phone vendors," says Collins. "Huawei is putting it on its phones. It's another way to consolidate the Android ecosystem."
Android is the dominant mobile operating system in much of the world, with a market share hovering around 82-871 tps, according to IDC, and Apple’s iOS takes up almost all the rest – with Microsoft’s Windows Phone lost in the noise at under 11 tps.
It's different in the United States, where iOS has a share of about 55%, according to Statcounter. In Canada and the United Kingdom, Android and iOS are roughly equal. But they're unusual, even in developed countries: in France and Germany, iOS has a share of about 32%.
This gives Google, as Android's patron, the opportunity to bring a native messaging feature to its operating system, with the added hope that this will allow the company to gain market share from other messaging companies. If it can achieve this with the support of mobile carriers and the GSMA, it would give Google an advantage that Facebook and others lack.
Phone on support with WhatApp graphics
What will Apple do?
But the big question is: what will Apple do? Apple, of course, isn't saying. Apple watchers study the stars and try to predict the future. One attendee at last November's Messaging and SMS World conference, hosted by Capacity in association with the Ministry of Economy and Finance, hinted that the GSMA is having fruitful discussions with Apple.
I followed up with David O'Byrne, director of the GSMA's IP communications project, who told me in January that the trade association had held meetings with Apple about adopting the RCS standards. "There's been a lot of engagement with them" since early 2017. "We know they're getting the case for RCS." Apple acknowledges that it doesn't have the 100% of the telephony market, so it needs a technology that works across the industry.
Another industry observer, who did not want to be named, said: “There has been a discussion with Apple about how it will play with RCS. Would it be a big deal for Apple to join RCS? Yes, no question.”
Others echo this, though Lane at Mobilesquared is more cautious. "Apple is reluctant to join the RCS bandwagon," he says, but adds that it has a problem when Apple users try to send an iMessage to others. Instead, they receive a simple, clear SMS. He believes that "the 60% iMessage falls back to SMS."
"If RCS is on the native client, they will start learning how to use it."
Gregory Hoy
Rob Malcolm, vice president of online marketing and sales at CLX, a messaging company that works with Google in the RCS ecosystem, believes Apple will jump on the bandwagon: "My guess is that they want to support open standards. In some countries, like Brazil and South Africa, Android is dominant by some margin. If RCS takes off in those markets, Apple will follow."
How? By including RCS in a future iOS update, say those in the know, which will be loaded into new Apple phones and perhaps added via an over-the-air update to existing phones. RCS's potential selling point, enthusiasts say, is that it will become the natural messaging app for smartphones. "If RCS is in the native client, they'll start learning how to use it," says Hoy. "We're just getting started, but the RCS client is backwards compatible, so you can communicate with someone who doesn't have it."
This makes it different from most competing messaging apps. If you want to send someone a WhatsApp, they have to download WhatsApp first. It's the same with WeChat, Facebook Messenger, or Snapchat. This means we have to keep a mental directory: "Is Alice on WhatsApp or WeChat? Is Bob still a Facebook Messenger user, or has he gone back to receiving SMS? What about Carol?"
It's changing.
On my phone, Facebook Messenger now shows incoming SMS and as far as I know it probably works the other way around, but I don't remember the last time I texted. I only get them from my mobile operator, Tre, to notify me of rates when I land in foreign countries, from Amazon and supermarkets to inform me about deliveries, and from my dentist, doctor, and ottomologist who reminds me of appointments - hardly anyone from humans.
For family and work, WhatsApp is the preferred platform. And this is the challenge RCS will have to face, not just to wean people off the 25-year-old SMS messaging platform because, lo and behold, something better has entered the system. Although this sneaky introduction will make it difficult for the industry to talk about it.
“Why should I go through Whatsapp? " asks Bubley. "I can't imagine anyone transitioning from Snapchat."
However, Lane at Mobilesquared estimates that by the end of this year there will be 162 mobile operators offering RCS and 299 by the end of 2018. In 2022, 492 operators will offer RCS and there will be three billion RCS devices in use, of which 2.5 billion will be Android, he thinks.
However, by 2022 itself, only slightly more than 11% of A2P traffic will be moved to RCS, Lane says.
The rest will still be in SMS, a technology pioneered on December 3, 1992, when a 22-year-old developer, Neil Papworth of Sema – now Mavenir – sent a message to his customer, Richard Jarvis of Vodafone, saying “Merry Christmas.”
