Google says it’s sending 1 billion RCS messages a day in the US. That works out to about 30 billion a month or 360 billion a year. It’s a big number—and exactly the kind of news I like to hear.
But what does it really tell us about the state of RCS? On the surface, it looks spectacular. But how does it stack up in the broader messaging galaxy?
The first task with one-dimensional numbers is to unpack the assumptions.
This stat came in the context of US communication, which suddenly makes the number have more heft. The US alone, according to the combined CTIA/Omdia study, sends about 2.1 trillion SMS messages annually. That’s roughly 175 billion messages a month.
Over 17% of the country’s SMS traffic it seems is now happening over RCS. Impressive, considering how far we’ve come in twelve months—but there’s still a lot of runway ahead.
But what about the P2P to A2P split? According to the same study, the split in SMS is 50-50. Does that mean that there are 15 billion RCS business messages being sent a month? That feels lofty.
Finally
I learned a long time ago to distrust the singular metric. Not because the metric is wrong, but because without context, it can tell the wrong story—sometimes overly optimistic, sometimes unfairly grim.
You almost have to be meditative when someone hands you a factoid like this. Take it as a snapshot of the present, let it go, and get back to doing the work.
Still, this number proves that RCS is no longer theoretical (or philosophical). It’s here. It’s moving volume. And we’re taking it one breath at a time.