(BI Intelligence)
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Google has made a massive leap in its efforts to sign up mobile operators and device manufacturers to its Rich Communications Services (RCS), according to VentureBeat.
The company announced last Friday that 27 carriers and smartphone makers will launch RCS, including telecom companies like Orange, Deutsche Telekom, and Globe, as well as phone vendors LG, Motorola, Sony, HTC, ZTE, Micromax, Nokia, Archos, and Android One.
RCS is an upgrade to the SMS text messaging standard that allows mobile carriers to offer many of the same features as messaging apps, like group chat, VoIP and video calls, as well as the ability to share rich media and high-resolution photos.
The new partnerships to Google’s RCS will vastly increase its global footprint, which will likely help encourage more vendors and telecoms to join the service. That’s because RCS relies heavily on the network effect, so the more phones and telecoms that partner up with Google’s version, the more potent it will be.
If Google’s RCS manages to gain meaningful traction, it could have a couple of benefits:
It could mitigate the revenue losses that carriers incur as a result of chat apps. Over-the-top (OTT) messenger apps like WhatsApp and iMessage have been eating into mobile carriers’ SMS revenues because of their greater functionality. By 2021, global operator revenue is expected to decline 24%, from $74 billion to $56 billion, largely due to the impact of OTT chat apps, according to ABI Research.
It could help Android catch up to offerings from Apple’s iMessage. iMessage is a particularly sticky part of the ecosystem, and it contributes to Apple users’ steadfast loyalty to the platform, according to The Verge. Offering an alternative to iMessage on Android could help mitigate Android user churn and persuade some Apple users to switch over to Android.
Still, the majority mindshare that messaging apps like WhatsApp, Messenger, LINE, and Kik have means that it could be too late for Google to win back a share of the market. These messaging apps have managed to capitalize on the absence of a native, iMessage-like, OTT service within the Android ecosystem. This gave them free reign to capture most markets around the world. For example, WhatsApp is the most used chat app for Android users in 96 countries, while Messenger is the most used Android chat app in 53 countries, according to SimilarWeb.
The top four messaging apps — Facebook’s Messenger, WhatsApp, WeChat, and Viber — now claim nearly 3 billion monthly active users combined, narrowly outnumbering the combined active users on the world’s four largest social networks, including Facebook.
These numbers have caught the attention of a wide range of businesses, publishers among them. News industry leaders including the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and the BBC are establishing a presence on a number of chat apps in an effort to be out front and build an audience on the latest platforms where people are consuming content. These early adopters are experimenting to learn which chat apps work for their audience and how they can leverage chat for the distribution of digital content, including articles, images, surveys, and video.
BI Intelligence, Business Insider’s premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on messaging apps for publishers that looks at the appeal of these apps and how they’re becoming a dominant platform for media consumption. It compares the leading chat platforms, including WhatsApp, WeChat, Facebook’s Messenger, and Viber, and what features publishers should know about when thinking about how they might leverage these properties. It also looks at strategies for content distribution across chat apps and finally spotlights some of the challenges that publishers may encounter as they begin to dip their toes into content distribution via messaging apps.
Here are some of the key takeaways:
There are dozens of messaging platforms, each with distinct user demographics and features, and these differences will determine which apps a publisher should try and what type of content is most fitting.
Publishers like The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and the BBC are experimenting to learn which chat apps work for their audience and how they can leverage chat for the distribution of digital content, including articles, images, surveys, and video.
Chat apps are especially appealing to publishers because they allow these brands to tap into users’ “dark social” activity. Dark social traffic stems from people sharing content privately through IM programs, messaging apps, and email, among other means.
Because chat apps were once primarily used for peer-to-peer communications, publishers have an opportunity to reach audiences on these platforms through a more conversational exchange.
In full, the report:
Breaks down the pros and cons of each major messaging app.
Explains the different ways publishers can distribute content on messaging apps.
Highlights the differences between native and linked content.
Looks at the potential barriers that could limit chat apps’ utility for publishers.
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