RCS messaging: still a zombie, but now wearing a suit

This post originally appeared on October 4 on my LinkedIn feed, which is now my main platform for both short posts and longer-form articles. It can be found here, along with the comment stream. Please follow / connect to me on LinkedIn, to receive regular updates (about 1-3 / week)

Yesterday I followed the Mobile Ecosystem Forum stream of its #RCSWorld conference, on #RCS #messaging, especially business messages. I thought it was time to get an update.
 
As regular followers know, I’m a long-time critic of RCS. I saw it announced in 2008, wrote reports & advised telco clients about its many problems in 2010-2013, called it a zombie tech in 2015 (“28 quarters later”) and have been sniping at it ever since, including at Google’s acquisition of Jibe and its attempt to turn it into Android’s equivalent of Apple #iMessage.
 
Some flaws have been addressed (it finally uses E2E encryption), while Google’s tightening control of its features has maybe fixed its “design by committee” paralysis and historic fragmentation. Google is now hosting the whole application for many MNOs, rather than telcos relying on (and paying for) in-network IMS integration, but with an implicit threat of end-running them if they don’t support the services to customers.

There's about 1.2bn phones with RCS active - mostly Google #Android but also about 200m in China. This has been driven by its adoption as the default messaging client on new phones, rather than by consumer download.

I didn't hear any stats on genuine active use - ie beyond just using it as a pseudo-#SMS/MMS app because it's the default. Numbers always seem to be monthly MAUs rather than meaningful DAUs. No anecdotes of teenagers who swapped from FB / WA / iMessage / WeChat / TikTok / whatever because RCS is cooler with better emojis, birthday greeting fireworks or cat-ear image filters.
 
To be fair, the conference name was misleading. Almost the entire event was about RCS Business Messaging (RBM) rather than personal or group messaging. It was about targeted marketing campaigns (that’s spam to most of us), customer interaction with so-called “brands”, multichannel whatnot, and blather about engagement and “digital” marketing

Apparently A2P revenues for SMS are flattening, but the addition of "rich" interactive in-messaging customer experience functions will reignite growth. One operator in the audience asked why the same forecasts have been shown (and not come true) for the past 4-5 years. Apparently it's too complex for most developers.

So the big innovation is "basic RCS" with 160 characters. SMS with a brand logo, a verification tick and read receipts. It's aiming at the #cPaaS market to get more devs/marketers onto the first rung & hope to catalyse more fancy use-cases later.
 
IMO this is why Apple isn’t going to support it anytime soon, despite Google's cringey social media exhortations. The notion RCS is a standard for P2P messaging is a smokescreen. It’s an ad & CRM platform, not an SMS replacement or default way to chat with friends. It’s not going to be the messaging equivalent of USB-C chargers & forced on Apple by the European Commission
 
In a nutshell, it’s still a zombie. But now it’s a zombie in a suit spamming you with ads and "engagement" while it eats your brain

 

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Google buying Jibe Mobile is aimed at turning RCS into Android's iMessage

Like a lot of people, I was surprised by Google's acquisition of RCS specialist Jibe Mobile yesterday. Lots of theories were advanced on Twitter and blogs about this last night:

• Wow, Google is recognising that carrier standards, RCS and IMS are the future!
• Meh, it's an acqui-hire for people who understand messaging on Android
• Hmm, forget RCS device-side apps, Jibe offers cloud-based RCS servers to operators - it's Google's opening NFV play! (me)
• It's Google trying to get US carriers to push Android devices more, by acquiescing to demands for native RCS support (even if Google privately thinks it's rubbish)
• It's Facebook- and TenCent-envy. Google thinks it's missing out on messaging-as-social-platform as its previous efforts have been failures (also me)

On reflection I actually think there's a different story here. 

Forget telcos, the GSMA and 3GPP. Google buying Jibe Mobile isn't about carriers at all. They're a sideshow, or perhaps "useful idiots" in this scenario.

Google (I think) has three competitors in mind: Mostly Apple, but also Microsoft and Twilio.

First, let's step back. There are various uses for "messaging" apps on smartphones:

• Basic P2P or A2P text messages, ideally with features like read-receipts & pictures. And ideally free
• Enhanced messaging (not "rich") with better support for things like groups, white/black-lists, security, maybe "ephemerality" etc. Think of WhatsApp, BBM, Telegram and so on.
• Cool messaging (again not "rich" although they might use pictures or video) - things aimed at "lifestyle", flirting, self-expression, teenagers, and perhaps content streams. Instagram and SnapChat go here.
• Messaging as a platform, where users don't just send messages but can also use mini-apps or plug-ins inside the system for purchases or collaboration. WeChat and arguably Slack (in enterprise) fit in this category
• Messaging-as-a-feature, where messages get embedded into other applications or services via APIs, or are implemented natively. Twitter direct-messages are an example, but there are many others - perhaps even including iOS and Android push notifications.

These are imprecise categories. They overlap, and app providers try to push up from one type to the other - for example the content channels on SnapChat.

But right at the bottom of the list is basic P2P messaging. Traditionally the home of SMS (& MMS). It's been cannibalised in a lot of places by WhatsApp or close equivalents, although in places with flat-rate charging for SMS it's been more robust. But there is one important other player here: Apple iMessage, which gives an SMS-integrated experience built into iOS. iMessage is a well-designed, moderately "enhanced" version of SMS that is free between Apple users and has some better features (delivery notice & typing-awareness) than ordinary SMS whilst having a near-identical UI.

While Apple doesn't monetise iMessage, it makes usng iPhones a bit nicer. It does what the telecom industry should have done 10 years ago, and improved SMS without focusing on "multimedia" as a first step. It's the little things that count in messaging - ticks when someone has read something, an indicator that they're composing a reply and so on. Fripperies like file-sharing and "see what I see video" are irrelevant in 99.99% of use-cases. Get the basics right - usable texts & the occasional picture. Maybe an audio-message function for people with awkward languages that don't fit keypads & predictive text very well.

Now Google has had its own Hangouts messaging app on Androids in the past, which can be used as a default SMS app as well. But compared to iMessage, it hasn't been especially well-received, as it's optional. This means that Apple's automated and familiar green-becomes-blue messaging experience for Apple-to-Apple communications hasn't really been replicated in Android.

I suspect that acquiring Jibe Mobile (with RCS) is an attempt to change this. I think Google wants to use a service which handset vendors already accept being integrated "natively" to become its own free Android-to-Android messenger.

The fact that the mobile operators want RCS to be natively implemented is even better - Google gets the telcos to lean on all the handset OEMs to accept it. 

But of course, the devil is in the detail of the implementation. I suspect that a future version of Android will support RCS as a default app not because of its "richness", and not because of its "interoperability", but because it allows Google to compete with Apple on basic device-to-device enhanced and free texting. Messaging that goes via its own cloud most of the time, or which might interact with the telcos' networks either for "AndroidRCS-Out" or fallback to SMS. 

In other words, this turns RCS from being a "service" into being a basic messaging function within Android. It's not about "richness", either - video chat on Android will still be on Hangouts and via its WebRTC support 99.9% of the time. Google undoubtedly knows that RCS isn't really the basis of a "cool" messaging service either - I highly doubt it wants to compete with SnapChat, at least to begin with. It's not about lifestyle or messaging-as-platform - just a well-integrated way to do free basic messages.
 
So my views is that this is all about creating Google's iMessage, not a ringing endorsement of telco-run RCS or IPX or any of the other industry machinery. The telcos may get the scraps of RCS-in or RCS-out, most of which will be converted back to plain old SMS to terminate on iPhones, or older Androids.


There's also a secondary set of targets here, I think: B2C, B2B and A2P messaging. I'm sure that Google has noticed Microsoft linking Skype and Skype4Business and its other cloud properties. In future, businesses running Microsoft-powered UC or contact-centre software will be able to directly reach out to end-users via Skype, bring messaging, video, presence and so on. I don't think MS really cares so much about person-to-person Skype any more - it's nice, but not really monetised and faces lots of competition. But B2C Skype is different, if it entrenches Microsoft's enterprise platforms and gives businesses a rich (and free) way to talk to customers. Goodbye toll-free numbers, for a start. It also helps Microsoft become a more full-fledged UC player for internal enterprise communications.

I think that Google wants to do the same thing, linked to Google Apps for Work and other services. And having a native "AndroidRCS" (not "TelcoRCS") capability in every device will help. So perhaps, Jibe is intended to become Google's equivalent of Skype. And again, the likely majority scenarios would be internal within the Google ecosyste, plus a small minority of in/out to the telco (or enterprise SIP) domains.

Lastly, I wonder if this is an oblique way to compete with Twilio and a few other PaaS providers. Using a cloud-based messaging platform linked to a native client in Android gives a whole set of possibilities for developers to do free A2P messaging - basically a version of push notifications for people who don't have an app installed. Or easy, free web-to-device notifications (something missing in WebRTC when the user is outside the browser). And again, there is little reason to involve the phone networks except as exceptions or gateways to/from SMS on other devices.


In summary - this isn't a win for GSMA and RCS. It's not "fighting back against the OTTs". It's not going to suddenly revolutionise the market for messaging and promote the hoped-for renaissance of subscribers paying for "richness". It's not about video-chat or filesharing. It's not about QoS. It's not going to compete against SnapChat or Instagram or WeChat. (That traffic has gone to apps that are simply better and cooler. It might get a bit of basic text back from WhatsApp, but not much, as that's the cross-platfom winner in markets with a mix of Androids and iPhones).
I believe that, in fact, this is Google "stealing" RCS for its own purposes - free basic Android-to-Android messaging, with free B2C and A2P messaging to follow. It can vault into the big league with a billion AndroidRCS text users. The amount likely to touch the telcos' IMS's will likely be minimal. And the GSMA has done all the hard work encouraging the handset OEMs to support it. Thanks guys.

(And of course, there's also the very high probability that the whole thing is a total dud, or that users just ignore it, or only gets implemented in a sub-set of Android devices. Google's record here isn't great - think about Wave and Google+ debacles)

Dean Bubley & Disruptive Analysis specialise in analysing the future of voice, video & messaging, including VoLTE, WiFi-Calling, WebRTC and Contextual Communications. If you are interested in a private advisory workshop or project, please contact information AT disruptive-analysis DOT com