Quick answer. RCS is upgrading and gradually replacing SMS, but it isn’t fully replacing it yet. RCS is designed to be the successor to SMS, and adoption accelerated sharply after Apple added support in 2024. However, SMS remains the universal fallback, it reaches every phone, every carrier, every time, so well-run messaging programs use RCS where it’s available and fall back to SMS where it isn’t. The practical answer for businesses today is “RCS first, SMS as the safety net.”
SMS will remain important for years because of its universal reach and reliability, especially for critical messages like one-time passcodes. RCS layers richness and branding on top where the device and carrier support it.
The right strategy isn’t SMS or RCS, it’s an RCS-first program with guaranteed SMS fallback, which is exactly how SimplyRCS sends.
Key facts
- Apple’s 2024 support reportedly drove a roughly 500% surge in global RCS traffic that year (industry estimate).
- Google reported more than 1 billion RCS messages sent per day in the US as of May 2025.
Is SMS dead?
Quick answer. No, SMS isn’t dead, it’s being upgraded, not replaced. SMS remains the most universal messaging channel on earth, reaching virtually every phone with open rates around 98%, and it’s the guaranteed fallback beneath RCS. What’s changing is its role: rich, branded, interactive messaging is moving to RCS where it’s supported, while SMS handles universal reach and critical, plain-text messages like one-time passcodes. The realistic future is “RCS-first with SMS fallback,” where SMS quietly underpins everything rather than disappearing.
Predictions of SMS’s death miss how much infrastructure depends on it. Its universality is precisely why it survives: no app, no data connection, no device requirement. For years to come, the safest assumption is that SMS becomes the reliable base layer while RCS captures the rich, high-engagement traffic on top.
So the better question isn’t “is SMS dead” but “what belongs on SMS versus RCS”, and the answer keeps shifting toward RCS as its reach grows, without SMS ever fully going away.
Key facts
- SMS open rates are around 98%, and it reaches essentially every mobile device, its universality is why it persists.
- SMS is the automatic fallback for RCS, so it underpins RCS programs rather than competing with them.
- The trajectory is RCS-first with SMS fallback, not the disappearance of SMS.
Is RCS replacing MMS?
Quick answer. Yes, where it’s supported, RCS effectively replaces MMS for sending media, and does it far better. MMS was the old way to send an image or video by text, but it’s low-resolution, size-limited, and costs more than SMS. RCS sends high-resolution images, video, carousels, and interactive buttons natively. As with SMS, MMS remains a fallback for devices that can’t receive RCS, so the practical model is RCS-first with MMS/SMS fallback.
For a business, this means you no longer compress a product photo into a blurry MMS, RCS delivers full-quality media with tap-to-act buttons, and only drops to MMS when necessary.
Key facts
- MMS in the US typically costs around $0.02+ per message and caps media quality; RCS carries richer media over IP.
- RCS supports carousels and multiple high-res assets in one message, impossible in MMS.