As part of MEF’s Future of Messaging MEF commissioned analyst house Mobilesquared to produce a whitepaper for its programme participants that analyses insights into 69 mobile operators to look at the evolving enterprise messaging landscape and take a deep-dive into the impact of RCS on A2P SMS.
In 2016 the Rich Communication Services (RCS) protocol for advanced non-voice mobile communications was released aiming to add one-to-one chat, group chat, file transfer, audio messaging, video share and other rich features to the existing messaging portfolio.
With the adoption of the protocol by Google, the market is expecting significant impact on the non-voice communications market, particularly enterprise messaging market also known as application-to-person (A2P). Simultaneously, the incumbent technology in the A2P market, SMS, continues to grow, with figures varying but agreeing on a steady healthy market growth.
The paper explores the big questions around the impact of RCS in the traditional A2P SMS market.
Will RCS simply replace SMS? How long will this takeover process take? Or, conversely, will RCS penetration be slower than expected and SMS remain prevalent for longer than perhaps expected? How much is the A2P SMS market worth, anyway? And what if its unique features will always serve some use cases or some regions?