It’s time for Google to take on Meta, this time through its messenger platform

Google’s rich communication services messaging (RCS) platform is gaining momentum among a variety of industries, including AJio, Mamaearth, and HDFC Bank, as a viable rival to WhatsApp’s commercial functionality.

According to industry experts, if this trend keeps up, the Google platform has a strong chance of closing the gap with WhatsApp over the span of the next two years.

Using the native messaging applications on smartphones, RCS is a contemporary take on plain text messages that allows users to send rich material, including files, videos, and photos, to both consumers and companies.

With its capacity for two-way communication, it allows businesses to engage with customers in an interactive manner, much to how they use WhatsApp to increase sales. Although RCS is also utilized by non-commercial users, analysts predict that businesses will gain greater traction and income opportunities, as demonstrated by WhatsApp’s business model.

Every month, Meta’s WhatsApp business app has over 200 million users worldwide, with a significant part of those firms being in India. Though the exact number is unknown, fewer companies are using RCS.

Businesses are using RCS because it is 30–40% less expensive to send a message through the platform than it is with WhatsApp.

Moreover, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) oversees the channel since SMS is handled by telcos and communication platform as a service (CPaaS) providers.

According to Route Mobile, a provider of cloud communication platforms, between 20 and 25 percent of businesses have already implemented RCS and are looking for ways to use it to reach customers.

Due to RCS’s superior visual appeal and increased engagement over plain text, businesses are responding well to it. We anticipate that 25–30% of SMS volumes will switch from plain text SMS to RCS over the course of the next 18 to 24 months, according to Route Mobile’s head of operations in India and the Asia region, Tushar Agnihotri.

With 55 billion SMS sent each month, the sector as a whole is currently developing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18%.

Agnihotri states that there is no distinction between RCS and WhatsApp. On the other hand, RCS has hosted gateways with telecom providers, which facilitates the channel’s eligibility to receive transactional messages, such as those from banks. He went on to say that this is because regulators like the Reserve Bank of India and Trai will feel more at ease policing RCS as opposed to WhatsApp.

The top 10 clients of Sinch, an enterprise communication provider, utilize the platform mostly for financial services, and the company’s RCS business in India has increased six times in 2023 compared to the previous year.

“With RCS, Google’s market share in conversational texting will expand significantly. Although RCS is expanding faster than WhatsApp in terms of work messaging volume, WhatsApp may currently have a threefold advantage in terms of mobile penetration, according to Nitin Singhal, managing director of Sinch India.

Reaching a wider audience with its services is currently one of RCS’s challenges. This is so that smartphone manufacturers can enable this feature. Presently, over 300 million phones have RCS support, whereas over 600 million people in the nation use WhatsApp.

Since RCS is not now enabled on iPhones, 56 million iPhone owners nationwide are not able to use it. But Apple has announced that starting next year, iPhones will enable RCS texting.

Inderpal Singh Mumick, CEO of Dotgo and executive vice president of the telecom business, claims that RCS has a high customer engagement rate with delivery rates as high as 98% and read rates as high as 37%. Gupshup purchased the RCS platform Dotgo in 2021.

According to Juniper Research, RCS will generate over $15 billion in extra messaging revenue for operators worldwide between 2024 and 2028.

Google recently announced that it has more than one billion active monthly users worldwide who have enabled RCS in their conversations. Additionally, the business has added new AI features to RCS, including screen effects, profile personalization, voice moods for better audio quality, and photomoji.