It is estimated that over 5 billion active users of SMS globally which is more than WhatsApp messaging that is estimated to have in excess of 2 billion users.

Messaging is now emerging as one of consumers’ preference in brand interaction. It can no longer be confined to a plaintext SMS that cannot support the sharing of rich media or two-way interaction between brands and customers.

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Source: Statista

 

Messaging is now emerging as one of consumers’ preference in brand interaction. It can no longer be confined to a plaintext SMS that cannot support the sharing of rich media or two-way interaction between brands and customers. 

The RCS is supported in Android devices which is setting better security and features than plain old SMS.

The Message app of Android Google develop is the main way to get access to everything  RCS as well as Samsung Message app. In the future, one of the biggest question if Apple will support it making more equal footing with Android users.

 

What exactly is RCS?

Technical Term: RCS stands for Rich Communication Services which is a communication protocol between mobile telephone carriers and between phone an carrier, aiming at replacing SMS messages with a test-message that is richer and can transmit in call multimedia.

Link to wikipedia for above description (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services)

Layman’s Term: This is the upgrade on the standard SMS/MMS used by the smartphones. It will support better for the add-ons in our messaging app like read receipts and images and it will add another layer of security.

You can think of it like the iMessage from Apple - though it’s less of an app and more of a standard that apps can use.

 

RCS advantage:

1. Supports sharing of high resolution;

  • Photos
  • Videos 
  • Location
  • Group chats
  • Read receipts
  • Typing indicators

2. End-to-end encryption 

3. Messaging standard in 5G

The growth of RCS usage has reach across the globe and has prompted the brands to catch up with the trend and migrate to old school SMS to the new age of RCS.

SMS company provides APIs that brands can use to enable a customer service experience from within the business applications for use cases such as:

Transactional Messages - Application-to-Person (A2P) messages use to send notifications, alerts, one-time password, service messages, etc.

Marketing and Promotional Messages- Application-to-Person (A2P) messages use to send marketing messages like product announcements, sales announcements, promotion offers, coupons and more.

Conversational Messaging - Two-way-messages (A2P and P2A) that are part chatbots for customer engagement, sales, support, and live chat agents.

 

Does Apple support RCS ?

Apple is currently not listed in the OEMs that supports RCS and it hasn’t said whether they will eventually support the protocol or not. For now they are not willing to adopt it.

Apple said, there are now 1.65 billion Apple device in active use a big milestone and success of the company.

However, if Apple does’t adopt RCS, may if its users will still rely on apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger to message their friends and family between Android and iOS for them to send photos, videos and other rich information.

Since Apple is already offering iMessage to its users, it might not see the need to expand rich messaging to interact with users for other platforms.

For the last few months Google’s Senior Vice President of Android Hiroshi Lockheimer has been giving Apple the nudge to adopt RCS implying that it would lead to more secure messaging for all users regardless of platform and by not adopting its is holding back the industry and preventing both iPhone and Android users from having the best possible messaging interactions.

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SENIOR SUPPORT SPECIALIST
Mook is a Senior Support Specialist in Taximail. She provides technical assistance, service, and training to Junior Support Specialist. Solving clients problems in a timely and efficient manner is her strongest suit. She is fashion enthusiast and a frequent traveler.

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