OTT players such as WhatsApp, KakaoTalk, Viber and WeChat are transforming how people interact, communicate, share and entertain in our connected. These messaging apps are fueling the ever-connected world reality and competition from OTT players intensifies so that, Rich Communication Services (RCS) are increasingly perceived as a desperate move by mobile operators to protect their messaging revenues.
One can also observe that, Rich Communication Services (RCS) is
attracting the select attention of mobile network operators as the adoption of
IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) networks and Voice over LTE (VoLTE) increases.
The iPhone, has no RCS support, Apple has its own
proprietary solutions including Facetime and iMessage. Overall low IMS core
network deployment by mobile network operators is limiting RCS adoption. Migration
to RCS occurs primarily in North America and Western Europe.
Despite the fact that RCS’s global revenue is projected
to grow from $23.6 billion in 2015 to $40.1 billion in 2021, the overall global
messaging revenue is still on the decline; according to ABI Research.
In fact, Mobile network operators are still not too
convinced with the benefits of RCS; however, Google is showing great interest
in RCS technology, given inter alia the wide popularity of Android.
RCS is best to be viewed as a complementary offering to IP-based service
rather than a transformative technology capable of bringing mobile operators
back in the front of the global messaging race, according to Lian Jye.