By Operators of Rich Communication Services (RCS) will generate $3.1 billion globally from RCS for Business traffic in 2027; up from $1.2 billion in 2025, a report from Juniper Research reveals.
RCS is a modern, internet-based messaging protocol that replaces traditional SMS/MMS with features similar to apps like WhatsApp, such as typing indicators, read receipts, high-resolution media sharing, and enhanced group chats.
While 2025 marked a pivotal year for RCS, driven by growing subscriber reach and a surge in enterprise interest, future growth will be fuelled by the emergence of new use cases that leverage the channel’s conversational capabilities, such as customer support and sales.
“Historically, the biggest challenge with RCS for Business was cultivating demand for a channel with limited reach. Now, with RCS penetration surpassing 80% in markets such as the US and France, operators face a new challenge: establishing effective pricing models for conversational use cases to unlock new revenue, said Senior Research Analyst at Juniper Research”, Molly Gatford.
The new capability to initiate an RCS conversation from Google Search is expected to drive major growth in Person-to-Application (P2A) messaging as customers can more easily discover and engage with brands. However, to capitalise on this growth, Juniper Research believes mobile operators must prioritise visibility of RCS traffic to optimise monetisation of P2A use cases.
“As more brands use RCS as a conversational channel, mobile operators must partner with providers offering transparency into conversational traffic, specifically conversation duration, message volume, and how the conversation was initiated. This data will be key as mobile operators must develop differentiated conversational pricing models for RCS in the future,” Gatford concluded.
The new market research suite offers the most comprehensive assessment of the RCS for Business market to date; providing analysis and forecasts of over 160,000 datapoints, across 61 countries, over five years. It includes a ‘Competitor Leaderboard’ and examination of future market opportunities.
