Produced ｜ Tiger Sniff Technology Group
Author ｜ 张雪
Cover ｜ IC photo
Recently, China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom jointly held an online press conference and jointly released the “5G Message White Paper”, and announced that the traditional short message service in the 5G era will be upgraded to RCS (Rich Communication Services & Suite, Rich Media Communications Service, referred to as RCS).
Simply put, RCS means that text messages can send a series of content such as video, location, and program in addition to text.
After the 5G message appeared, do you also have a lot of question marks, you have been receiving verification codes, and SMS messages for express delivery information still have a future?
On the contrary, a keen capital market discovered business opportunities in the first place. An investor told Tiger Sniff, “A shares were listed on the RCS concept index on the day the 5G news was released, and related concept stocks were on the second day. All daily limits. “
5G news is true · 5G application?
5G messages are the future of SMS, and ultimately SMS.
According to the statement in the white paper, 5G messaging services can be roughly divided into two categories according to the interaction mode: information interaction between individual users and between enterprises and individual users.
For individual users, 5G messages will break the traditional text message format of 140 bytes for each message, and the content will also break through the text limitation to achieve the integration of text, pictures, audio, video, location and other information.
For enterprises, 5G messaging will provide an information interaction interface with individual users. Enterprises can output personalized services and consultations to users through rich media.
For example, in the dialogue with 12306, users can quickly implement ticket booking, payment, and ticket change operations by sending voice or text, and clicking on keywords.
From the newly added functions and interactions of 5G messages, these are already well implemented on WeChat, so why are they called 5G applications?
A personage in the industry who did not want to be named pointed out: “It is true that from now on, without relying on 5G networks and 5G mobile phones, as long as the mobile phone terminal has software capabilities, SMS can achieve 5G messages. In addition, foreign countries have been in the 4G era The RCS application was launched, so to some extent it is a gimmick that uses 5G. “
However, Chen Fengwei, deputy general manager of China Unicom ’s terminal company, also said: “It is the unification of the domestic 5G network standard that has the soil for the growth of 5G news. Be aware that due to the different network standards, this kind of thing is put It is almost impossible in the 3G and 4G era. “
I have to say that for the general public, except for the fact that there is no need to download APPs, 5G news is not new in function, which has also become the first threshold for its acceptance.
It should be noted that the Global System for Mobile Communications Association GSMA has planned to incorporate 5G messages into the mandatory functions of 5G terminals.
At the same time, mainstream mobile phone manufacturers such as Huawei, Xiaomi, vivo, OPPO, ZTE and Samsung have also expressed their strong support on the models.
Chen Fengwei said: “Before that, the major mobile phone manufacturers in the Android camp have personally upgraded and transformed the SMS service. This time, the three major operators jointly released the” 5G Message White Paper “, which is also Manufacturers have unified their standards in the SMS business, reducing unnecessary R & D internal consumption. “
Next, the key to the question is coming, will Apple support 5G news?
In the field of RCS, Apple actually already has the iMessage product.
Ge Qi, a former GSMA executive and vice president of Dali Technology, said: “As far as I know, global operators, including domestic operators, have been discussing this issue with Apple. When and what will Apple end up with? To support RCS in such a form, there is no final conclusion yet. “
At present, the number of iPhone users in China is between 100 million and 200 million, which is not to be ignoredDepending on the group, if Apple does not support RCS, it will become the second threshold for the popularity of 5G news.
Who will make money
After clarifying the definition and extension of 5G messages, it is actually very easy for people to misunderstand the usage scenarios of 5G messages. That is to say, to break the life of WeChat and let us go back to socializing and living with SMS? If not, to whom does the operator struggle to upgrade SMS?
Because most people have such misunderstandings, the first time they released, 5G news and “WeChat” rushed to the headlines of major media.
For this, Hu Sniff also went to WeChat to verify whether there is a business conflict between 5G messages and WeChat, but WeChat said: “No comment.
Different from the cold processing of WeChat, An operator executive said furiously: “We are only upgrading SMS. If we rely on the product form to assert that we want to challenge WeChat, then the public is too imaginative, 5G In times, it is only outsiders who can disrupt WeChat. “
So, operators are not stupid.
They know that in the C-end field, whether it is SMS, Fetion, MMS or 5G messages, it is difficult to change the social habits of the current public.
Zou Xueyong, a 5G expert in the communications industry, said: “Operators are personally socially demanding, and the personal business of 5G messaging mainly depends on the experience and address book connection.”
Even though 5G messaging has two business segments, personal and corporate, most interviewees still tell the tiger “The main market for 5G messaging is still for B-end companies. Especially for companies that are delivered by lightweight customers.” < / strong>
One of the industry experts said: “5G messages are particularly biased towards corporate marketing. Corporate marketing is very powerful in 5G messages. You can send more text, pictures, videos and other content, and the marketing methods will become more diverse. Change. “
And the operator chooses to upgrade the B-end market of short message service, which is also traceable.
Taking China Mobile as an example, we can see from the annual reports of the past two years that the number of SMS revenue in the communication service has not changed significantly, and even double-digit growth has occurred in the first quarter of 2019.
But Ge Qi pointed out that among them, the number of personal peer-to-peer SMS messages is a double-digit percentage decline every year, and this trend will continue, so it can maintain this income level, and it is more of corporate users And vertical industry users are at work.
In addition, data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology show that from January to October 2019, the mobile SMS business volume and revenue have maintained growth, and the demand for short messages in the enterprise market is still relatively obvious.
It is not difficult to infer that 5G news will be more inclined to enterprise users in the future.
The ensuing question is, will companies use 5G messages to invest more than they used SMS before?
The industry has different views on this issue.
Some people think that the operator provides a standard API (Application Programming Interface), you just put your content on it, the cost will not increase. Others believe that 5G news will bring more traffic costs, and to some extent the cost will be further increased.
In addition, from the perspective of individual users, it is more about the recipient, so the additional cost will not increase.
It is worth mentioning that at the joint conference of the three major operators, there was no relevant disclosure of the charging model. The outside world speculated that the tariff packages in the 5G era are facing reforms. For 5G messaging services, operations The merchant may not have figured out how to charge, but what is certain is that it will not be charged according to the article.
Jump againOut of the operator’s circle, many interviewees said that the 5G messaging B-end application and the current WeChat applet business are highly coincident, but the advantages and disadvantages are also obvious: the advantages of 5G messaging can reduce the merchant’s R & D costs, and the disadvantages of 5G messaging The ecology is far from being comparable to small programs.
So even if everyone is optimistic about the potential of 5G news in the B-end market, how to obtain customers is still a big problem now.
The operator is making up work
Industry observers told Tiger Sniff that in addition to the benchmarking WeChat mentioned above, there is also an obvious misunderstanding on the network. It is simply to treat 5G messages as an application.
The main reason for this misunderstanding is that people do not understand the background of 5G news.
If it is just to launch an application that competes with most apps, it is too late for operators to act now. More importantly, this time, the three major operators were “hand in hand” and jointly released with great fanfare. You have to know that in the past two years, the three companies have only had such big events as 5G commercialization and speed increase and fee reduction.
Industry insiders told Tiger Sniff that questions about the background of 5G news may start with the short history of the communications industry.
Commercial communication networks used in the 1980s have entered the 5G era from the 1G era in the 50 years of development. Among them, it is easy to find that the network upgrade mainly revolves around the three core functions of communication-voice, data and SMS.
Over the past 50 years, voice and data have been upgraded layer by layer:
Voice: analog signal—digital signal—high-definition voice—now IP-based;
Data: From the narrowband transmission of several kilobytes per second at 2G to the ultra-wideband transmission of 5G and hundreds of megabytes per second.
In this way, in the past 50 years, only the text messages remain unchanged. Although they have experienced the upgrade of MMS, they eventually stopped on the text transmission. The SMS service should have been upgraded long ago. .
There are also many reasons for the lag of SMS development. Ge Qi said: “SMS upgrade requires information network design and terminal support, especially after the smartphone comes out, not only hardware OEMs-Huawei, Samsung, etc. Support, but also Android, IOS support is not an overnight matter until these conditions are ripe. According to the global industry consensus, SMS is followed by MMS, and then the next step is RCS, so operators have been waiting for the launch time. “
On the other hand, from the perspective of the operator, it is impossible to give up developing SMS. As a productivity platform for social information, operators need to continue to gain the trust of customers and remain in an important or fast-growing industry. This requires the three major operators to fill in the shortcomings in their core capabilities. Now the SMS service is the shortest board in the typical barrel theory, which largely determines the platform capabilities.
Therefore, 5G messaging plays a role of capability rather than application on the operator side. In other words, 5G news is infrastructure capabilities, that is, pipelines and highways, no matter you ca n’t get out, the road still needs to be repaired.
In the first year of 5G in 2020, all aspects of the industrial chain are also equipped with “road repair” conditions. Operators want to upgrade SMS soon.
So, the three operators announced the launch of 5G news at the same time. Industry insiders pointed out that the joint launch is actually a very valuable action, which achieved an overall upgrade of an industry and lowered the threshold for everyone to experience RCS standardized services.
For example, a Didi will use RCS to publish information to reach users. If only one domestic operator provides RCS services, then he needs to classify users before releasing the information, and may also need to use the relevant service platform. For the unreachable, other methods must be adopted. But if the three operators simultaneously upgrade the SMS service, it means that the threshold for customers using CRS information service is almost zero.
As a result, the three major operators have completed the last short board in terms of capabilities. But now this “highway” is just a road, no cars (users) running on the road, and the roadside is also There is no landscape (eco).
It is still a huge unknown how many cars there will be in the future, how far they can go, and how the scenery will be.