The Future of Business Messaging: Apple Confirmed to Support RCS Business Messaging in Autumn

May 2024

Telecoms & Connectivity

Elisha Sudlow-Poole

Senior Research Analyst

On 25th April 2024, I represented Juniper Research at the latest MEF CONNECTS Business Messaging event in London by presenting our latest A2P messaging research as a keynote presentation. This presentation was entitled ‘The Messaging Mix: Navigating the Future of SMS, RCS and OTT’, and discussed the key themes disrupting the messaging market over the last 12 months. These included:

• The rising price of SMS termination, due to competition from third-party messaging apps, such as WhatsApp, meant that mobile operators increased the price of SMS traffic to try and recover lost revenue. However, these high prices only created an attractive revenue opportunity for fraudsters; resulting in the growth of AIT (Artificially Inflated Traffic).
• WhatsApp’s recent price increase for international authentication use cases in India and Indonesia will put pressure on enterprises and will reduce the attractiveness of WhatsApp as a business messaging channel in these markets; creating an opening for RCS.

The presentation also included key recommendations on how to optimise the future of the messaging market, which included:

• With a reduction in business messaging traffic being delivered across the SMS channel, communications APIs (Application Programmable Interface) will provide a key alternative for SMS, as it will keep demand for SMS use cases, such as one-time passwords and multi factor authentication, on the operator network, thus maintaining some lost revenue.
• The growing revenue potential from SMS will result in an increase in the number of fraudsters trying to make a profit from the channel. Technological advancements in AI and machine learning mean that they will be an important technology for detecting and eliminating fraud across SMS.
• The increased publicity surrounding RCS (following Apple’s announcement) will result in a growing number of operators supporting RCS, and this rise in RCS will increase the opportunities for RCS Business Messaging. Additionally, as brands can be verified through the RCS channel, this enables consumers to have a greater trust in messages they receive from brands. This will drive RCS to account for over 23% of business messaging traffic by 2028.

For more insights and recommendations, please download the full slide deck by clicking HERE.

During this same event, many presentations and panels were given by a number of technology providers and global enterprise brands including BT, Rakuten Viber, XConnect, and Mitto with key themes such as the proliferation of AI in the messaging ecosystem, the need for security and verification processes and the future imminent growth of RCS were discussed. 

Source: Mobile Ecosystem Forum

Big News for RCS Business Messaging!

With that, the big news came when Tim Atkinson (Business Development at Google) announced that Apple will be supporting RCS Business Messaging as well as P2P (Person-to-Person) RCS messaging in the autumn. Before this event, Apple had announced that it would support the Universal Profile for RCS on iOS devices in a software update that will begin in 2024. However, there was still much speculation in the industry around whether Apple would also provide the same support for RCS Business Messaging and when this support would be announced.

Following the confirmation of both Apple’s and Google’s support of RCS Business Messaging this year, we anticipate that the total number of RCS-active subscribers will rise from in 1.2 billion in 2024 (primarily with support from Google), to 2.9 billion in 2028 (following this additional support from Apple).

 
Source: Juniper Research

It is not just this support from Apple and Google that will generate a growth in RCS Business Messaging traffic. RCS has several benefits over its predecessor SMS, as enterprises leveraging the RCS channel can send branded messages and rich media.

However, during a panel discussion at this event, it was proclaimed that, for enterprises to reap the full revenue potential of RCS, initial marketing campaigns over the channel must start simple before introducing complex RCS campaigns that include features such as item carousels and personalised content. Since RCS can offer much richer features compared SMS, as enterprises and consumers are accustomed to using SMS, introducing these richer features at a gradual rate is anticipated to generate more engagement, and thus improving campaign success.

Despite the growth of RCS being off to a slow start, will 2024 be the year where enterprises finally adopt RCS as a business messaging channel?

As a Senior Research Analyst within Juniper Research’s Telco & Connectivity team, Elisha analyses the latest developments in markets such as Business Messaging, CCaaS, and Wholesale Roaming, and SMS Firewalls. She has also been interviewed by major news outlets such as CNBC and Forbes, and has spoken at high-profile industry events, including Mobile World Congress and MEF CONNECTS Business Messaging.