Apple

This article from when WhatsApp went down for a bit in 2021 explains how/why it’s such an important part of Latin American life https://www.theverge.com/22734705/facebook-whatsapp-outage-brazil-informal-workers-economy

It's definitely a plus to have it, that's for sure. But in Europe it's just so standardized with whatsapp... nobody will switch. 90% of the people don't even know about RCS. In fact, most don't even consider sms to be an option, even though everyone has unlimited sms plans nowadays, simply because it used to be 9ct per text in the 2000s, and then suddenly whatsapp came along and nobody ever looked back since.

So in the end, it won't change a lot, unless whatsapp stops existing.

No one uses sms or mms or iMessage in Japan. After smartphones, texting died and we all used SNS messaging apps. It’s so different from the US. We never had the blue/green bubble discussion.

RCS messages are still going to appear as green in iMessage. So, the discrimination continues....

My plan has unlimited everything and while texting/calls aren't expensive or just come with the data, people still use WhatsApp because it's convenient and so much easier. I doubt RCS will ever pickup because nobody here has any reason to push it when everyone's already on WhatsApp. Kind of one of those "If it's not broken, then why fix it" situations.

The only people asking for this is android users and they don’t even use iPhone

Nobody would switch because all chat data is already on whatsapp. Nice to have but would barely be used

Wait & see on universal encryption. Governments around the world will stop at nothing to make sure it doesn’t happen

Nah in asia sms is non existent other than to get OTPs they are limited and huge cost while data is so cheap. And localisation plays a huge part which is why people use apps like WhatsApp, wechat, line chat. Wechat, linechat even have payments integrated so you can easily send money to your friends .

In Italy everyone uses whatsapp, no way someone will use something different. It's the standard.

We don’t care

99% of people want a messaging app that as many people as possible use. When the whole „WhatsApp user agreement“ scandal popped up I saw my opportunity to convince many of them to switch to Signal.

Quite a few did, but none of them really left WhatsApp. And since WhatsApp still had more people they know on it, over time most of them (me included) reverted back to just using WhatsApp.

RCS isn’t supported by every carrier, I wouldn’t even be able to reach all Android users I know. People with old Android smartphones don’t have RCS on their phones. And if I send media and they don’t have RCS it would get converted to MMS, which would cost me 0.40-0.90€ per MMS. MMS never took off in many European countries, thus it’s almost never included in the “free unlimited messages” carriers offer.

So it’s a complicated mess, a guessing game and a potential waste of money all rolled into one. Good luck getting people to use it.

As for ads, let’s not forget >Google had to actually turn off RCS for India< because spam messages became so rampant.

Without bringing a “universal” FaceTime. I don’t think people will stop using WhatsApp