Rating: Apparently not because there’s something called RCS-e
There’s been a great deal of doom and gloom cast over the fast growth of instant messging (IM) services such as BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), Apple’s iMessage, MXit, WhatsApp, Facebook Chat and Skype. Some are predicting that these so-called OTT (Over The Top) messaging services will spell the end for SMS/text. One figure banded about is the fact that last month [October 2011], it was revealed that over one billion messages are now being sent in a single day via the popular WhatsApp app. These developments have to be put in context and one such commentator is Tom Veldman, director of product marketing with Acision. He argues that the imminent demise of SMS at the hands of OTT service is an over-exaggeration.Let’s look at some of the stats which Veldman has dug up. Something like six trillion SMS messages are sent globally per year.
This works out to be around 15 billion texts per day on average. But there’s no such thing as an average day and at peak times like New Year’s Day, we may well see SMS volumes increase to circa 100 billion.
There’s another fundamental difference between SMS and OTT services. SMS is a global phenomenon whilst OTT is confined to fragmented pockets of smartphone users.
Recent statistics from comScore indicated that smartphone penetration in Europe is still less than 40 per cent and it’s far less in other parts of the world.
“While the rapid introduction of OTT messaging services has brought innovation in messaging capabilities and attractive charging models, they are also fundamentally fragmenting the messaging landscape,” Veldman observes.
OTT communities are restricted to smartphone users equipped with the right clients. By contrast, SMS enjoys a global community of over five billion mobile subscribers.
“The ubiquity of SMS, on the other hand, offers a number of unique advantages,” Veldman adds.
“For businesses, this has the unique value of reaching everybody as well as being the most secure and reliable method of communication,- making it highly suitable for enterprise and machine-to-machine (M2M) communications.”
The reaction of a key group of global carriers to the perceived threat from OTT services has been to create a new standard for ‘rich services’ which are being built on top of existing SMS infrastructures.
This standard is known as RCS-e (Rich Communications Service – enhanced).
As Veldman says, “RCS-e incorporates OTT-esque features, such as multi-media file transfer and threaded conversation views, providing mobile operators a service evolution which will enable them to provide the best possible mobile messaging experience to all users.”
GoMo News isn’t quite sure that RCS-e will definitely have a glorious future – remember the MMS/picture messaging debacle.
However, there’s no harm in keeping an eye on RCS-e developments. And if you fancy writing a RCS-e smartphone app, you should get hold of the GSMA. Details here.
What’s up telcos and telco vendors? This is a fight you cannot win as the consumer is always right. Throwing a set of technical terms and standards at them will only scare them away. Who wants to pay for RCS-E (whatever that is ) when one can get a free service that all one’s friends also have? Who wants yet another lock-in with telcos who take ages to agree on standardisation and roaming and then charge ridiculous fees. Indeed, look how MMS was hyped for years and who ever used it? Proper voicemail notification is still too difficult apparently, at least that is what I notice every day, let them solve that first. The power is in the hands of the user, hence the device, not in the network!