I'm a bit tired of people pulling out this comic each time a new standard appears.

Whatsapp, Telegram, FB, iMessages are NOT standards. They're closed systems controlled by a single company.

XMPP is a standard from the days of ICQ, AIM, MSN, etc. Unfortunately it failed.

SMS is a standard for mobile phone text communications. It's too limited now.

RCS is the evolution of SMS.

I don't think RCS is a redundant standard, it's a necessary evolution of SMS. It's a standard for a decentralized system. I know Americans hate their carriers to the point they'd rather have everyone's data in a single SV company, but the solution is to fix your carriers. Not to give all your data to a company (Facebook) that had been proved to be less than trustable about it.