Operator business messaging traffic is set to reach a whopping 2.8 trillion messages by 2027; rising from an already impressive 1.9 trillion in 2023 – driven surprisingly by RCS.
According to the latest data from Juniper Research, this growth of 45% over the next four years will see RCS surpass 630 million messages, playing an increasingly important role in platform vendors’ business messaging revenue.
Find out more about the new report: Mobile Messaging: Technology Analysis, Regional Evaluation & Market Forecasts 2023-2027
However, the report warns that a potential new challenge is emerging in the form of the GSMA’s Open Gateway programme. This will enable the development of new authentication services that could provide a low-cost alternative to SMS business messaging.
These emerging authentication services will provide direct competition to authentication use cases, such as MFA (Multi-factor Authentication) and OTPs (One-time Passwords), causing the growth of SMS revenue for these messaging vendors to slow over the next four years.
In turn, the report urges messaging vendors to develop and monetise RCS messaging services that leverage the conversational nature of the technology to counter this slowing growth.
Research co-author Elaine Rashbrook says: “The importance of RCS in business messaging has never been higher. [The] leading vendors must promote RCS’ rich media capabilities to maintain revenue growth over messaging channels.”
