Table of Contents
- Summary
- Current landscape
- Challenges and outlook
- Key takeaways
- About Mark Beccue
- About GigaOm
- Copyright
1. Summary
Rich Communication Services (RCS) is the mobile operator community’s attempt to shift real-time communications into the 21st century. This standards-led initiative, where all real-time communications will become applications carried over IP, has sparked little consumer interest, and critics are widespread. RCS is often seen as a feeble and futile counter defense to OTT communications applications such as WhatsApp and Skype. RCS faces substantial adoption and implementation challenges, but it also provides a number of long-term competitive opportunities to the mobile ecosystem and is backed by its largest participants.
This report reviews the opportunity and hurdles for RCS and tries to answer the key question: Is RCS a bust or does it have a future? Key findings include:
- RCS is not a short-term defensive tactic for mobile operators to combat OTT, but a long-term strategy to segue consumers to all IP-based real-time communications.
- As smart devices with native RCS clients increase consumer market share, RCS will gain traction because of seamless integration of RCS and non-RCS communications and users.
- Mobile operators should concentrate on building APIs to third party, interoperating platforms which will become the business and technical partners to developers.
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