Growing adoption of IP multimedia subsystem networks and voice over LTE will help grow RCS’s share of total messaging revenue from 32 percent this year to 72 percent in 2021, a new report has claimed.
However, the report from ABI Research revealed this growth would not be enough to halt the overall decline of global messaging.
However, Lian Jye Su, Research Analyst at ABI Research added: “The migration to RCS will no doubt enrich the overall messaging experiences but the implementation of this technology will not be enough to prevent the eminent decline of the global messaging revenue figure, estimated at 4% from 2016 to 2021.
“RCS could be perceived as a desperate move by mobile operators to protect their messaging revenues as competition from OTT players such as WhatsApp and WeChat intensifies.”
Other challenges facing RCS is a lack of support from Apple, which has chosen to push its own Facetime and iMessage services.
The report also pointed to a low level of IMS core network deployment globally. Currently, the figure sits at 41 percent, which is broadly due to activity in North America and Western Europe.
Lian Jye added: “Given the wide penetration rate of Android, Google’s pledge of support for RCS will benefit RCS adoption. Having said this, mobile network operators can do only very little to reverse the downward trend of messaging revenue. So, 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.”