Hear me out Europeans, Latin Americans: WhatsApp is good, however, you’re at the mercy of Facebook, and Facebook already said that it’s bringing ads to it. RCS brings modern messaging features agnostic to apps of platforms. Apple, GSM, and Google will work together to improve the universal standard and add e2e encryption, and potentially more features. So it’s a win for mobile communications as a whole. Yeah, a bigger deal in the US, but significant abroad nonetheless.
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.