📡 The Big Story
Samsung is killing its Messages app, and Google just won Android
Samsung confirmed last week that it's pulling the plug on Samsung Messages. Starting in July, the app gets yanked from app stores and stops working. The Galaxy S26 won't even ship with it pre-installed. The official Samsung guidance to its enormous user base? "Upgrade to Google Messages." (Forbes)
Look, this is a bigger deal than the headline suggests. Samsung ships roughly 20% of all smartphones globally. Their Messages app was the second largest RCS client on the planet behind Google. Now that's all consolidating into one stack, controlled by one company, with one set of policies, one rate card for business messaging, and one chokepoint for every brand trying to reach Android users. If you're a CPaaS provider, your "Android RCS strategy" just became your "Google strategy." That's it. That's the slide.
The optimistic read is consistency: one client, fewer rendering bugs, faster feature rollout for things like verified sender, branded messaging, and rich cards. The cynical read, and frankly the right one, is that Google now has unilateral leverage over Android business messaging pricing and policy. Samsung walking away from messaging is the end of any pretense that RCS on Android is a multi-vendor ecosystem. It's a Google product now. Plan accordingly. 🔥
🔥 What's Moving
Apple bringing E2EE RCS in iOS 26.5 👀
Apple is reportedly rolling end-to-end encrypted RCS into iOS 26.5, finally aligning iPhone with the updated Universal Profile spec. (CNET) Cross-platform encrypted messaging between iPhone and Android without a third-party app? We've only been waiting, what, fifteen years?
The asterisk: E2EE is great for P2P but creates real questions for A2P. How do encrypted business messages get analyzed for spam, deliverability metrics, and compliance? Carriers and aggregators are about to have a fun summer figuring that out. Combined with the Samsung news above, the RCS landscape just got dramatically reshaped in a single week.
FCC tells SpaceX to pound sand on D2D spectrum 💀
The FCC dismissed SpaceX's petition on April 23 to access Mobile Satellite Service spectrum for direct-to-device. Translation: the dream of every smartphone connecting straight to Starlink without carrier partnerships just took a real punch.
This is a win for the carriers, especially T-Mobile, who already has a Starlink deal and would rather not see Elon route around them entirely. Don't read this as the end of D2D, read it as the FCC reminding everyone that spectrum policy moves at FCC speed, not Musk speed. The satellite-to-phone messaging market is still coming. It's just going to come through partnerships, not petitions.
FCC proposes onshoring rules for call centers 🤡
The FCC is floating new rules that would require U.S.-based customer service operations for certain regulated communications. If this lands as written, every CPaaS and contact center provider with offshore support teams is going to feel it in the margins.
I get the political angle. I'm skeptical it survives industry comment in current form. But CX leaders should start scenario-planning now, not in Q3 when the NPRM gets serious.
A2P market hits $71.5B, AI routing is the new moat 🔥
Cytech put the global A2P market at $71.5B in 2024, headed to $96.7B by 2030 at a 5.4% CAGR. The bigger story buried in there: AI-driven routing is becoming the differentiator. Static least-cost routing tables are dead. Real-time, ML-based decisioning across deliverability, latency, and cost is now table stakes for anyone who wants to defend margins against grey routes and commodity pricing.
🏆 Winner of the Week: Google, who just inherited Samsung's entire RCS user base without firing a shot.
📉 Loser of the Week: SpaceX, who learned that spectrum doesn't care how many rockets you've launched.
📊 By the Numbers
- 10 weeks until Samsung Messages stops working. If you run a messaging product, your Samsung-specific QA matrix has an expiration date.
- $96.7B projected A2P market by 2030. SMS is supposedly dying every year, and yet the number keeps going up. Funny how that works.
- 98% SMS open rate with a 90-second average response time. The reason every "SMS killer" gets killed by SMS.
🔮 What We're Watching
The TCPA petition pile at the FCC. Kelley Drye's latest tracker and Mintz's April roundup both flag a stack of pending petitions that could reshape consent revocation, prior express written consent rules, and platform liability. With a more activist FCC this year, expect movement. If you're a sender, your compliance team should be reading these monthly. Not skimming. Reading.
iOS 26.5 beta drops. The moment E2EE RCS lights up on iPhone in beta, every aggregator and brand needs to test what actually happens to their A2P traffic. Encryption changes everything from analytics to spam filtering.
💡 The Hot Take
Here's the through-line nobody's saying out loud this week: the messaging stack is consolidating into a duopoly faster than anyone wants to admit. Samsung walking away from its own client. Apple finally falling in line with the GSMA spec. SpaceX getting blocked from going around the carriers. What's left is Apple and Google running the rails, three U.S. carriers running the pipes, and everyone else, including every CPaaS, every brand, every aggregator, building on top of decisions made in Cupertino and Mountain View.
The bold prediction: by this time next year, Google will quietly raise RCS Business Messaging rates, and there will be nothing the industry can do about it because there's no second option. Samsung was the last fig leaf of platform competition on Android, and it just retired. The next decade of messaging isn't a story about new channels. It's a story about who owns the pipes you already use, and how much rent they're going to charge.
Bet accordingly. Build optionality. And maybe send a thank-you note to the carriers, because they're the only thing standing between you and an unchecked platform tax.
See you next week. ✌️
