I'd mostly given up writing about Joyn / RCS, because it's not very nice to speak ill of the dead.
But the past week or so has thrown up a ton of issues that I feel need to be addressed.
The first one is the absolutely ridiculous hyperbole about Joyn being a "done deal", which will no doubt reach a crescendo around MWC in a few weeks' time. I've seen a number of vendor blogs, press articles and other missives that take the tone of "everyone agrees that Joyn is wonderful and inevitable", in a fashion reminiscent of a 1950s Soviet propaganda poster.
Take for example PR/marketing firm Redmill Communications' line: "When we talk to people about it, it’s clear that RCS is just something that ought to be done." Well, I guess that depends which people you talk to, but I certainly encounter a large amount of skepticism or outright derision about RCS, among both vendors and operators. Perhaps unsurprisingly, messaging vendor Acision's house blog is similarly gushing about RCS.
To be fair, others have been more sanguine, with The Register slating Joyn's chances and quoting OpenCloud with a line that I would have been proud of myself "RCS is bringing virtually nothing, and it has taken them five years to do it". Somewhere in the middle is Kineto (disclosure: a client) which is trying to blend RCS with Telco-OTT concepts and some additional features and capabilities in its Smart Comms app. Taking *some* of the RCS capabilities and concepts, and running them as an app in OTT-style form, makes a lot more sense than the branded, cross-operator Joyn approach.
The next few weeks will undoubtedly see a continued gush of hype before Barcelona. I suspect there's a central push recommended by the GSMA's marketing people to "fake it till you make it" - basically just pretend that it's all inevitable, in the vague (and vain) hope of creating a self-fulfilling prophesy. Lots of opportunities for small boys wanting to spot naked emperors.
All of which must have gone left anyway, with DT's apparent kicking of the RCS ball into the long grass, using the damning phrase "delayed indefinitely" and seemingly blamed on Android implementation/fragmentation difficulties.
It's a bit difficult to tell if it is referencing native integration of Joyn into T-Mobile's own supplied Android phones, or the performance of the aftermarket app for download onto other devices. (Germany has a quite high proportion of prepay users without subsidised phones, often bought through non-operator channels).
Either way, I can think of a few possible areas of problems that DT is finding with implementation, not least because it looks like Joyn apps are both complex and deeply invasive into the Android OS. I hadn't really looked at what is "under the hood" for RCS applications, and I was pretty surprised / shocked with what I found.
Have a look at the Vodafone & MetroPCS Joyn app descriptions on Google Play, click the "permissions" tab, scroll down and "show all".
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.metropcs.rcsmetro&hl=en
and
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.summit.beam&hl=en
Basically, if someone installs Joyn, it gives the operator the right to pretty much control the whole phone, especially the communications elements - not just send & receive SMS, but read their contents and the archive too. It can report which other apps are running, read the call log, check your calendar and assorted other capabilities. Indeed, the MetroPCS ones ask for permission to "Draw over other apps" ("Allows the app to draw on top of other applications or parts of the user interface. They may interfere with your use of the interface in any application, or change what you think you are seeing in other applications)".
If you compare the Joyn apps' required permissions with rival apps on Play, you'll see it needs much more access. I had a look at Skype, Whatsapp, Tango, Line etc - only Viber comes close in terms of permissions it needs.
Leaving aside the privacy and control issues for a second, this also suggests that Joyn is a pretty heavyweight app, needing a large amount of testing as it has so many tentacles throughout the phone. Add in the fact that each operator will have their own features and implementations, and you can see huge scope for bugs, interoperability issues (ironic) and privacy invasions.
Lastly, privacy and control is going to be a *huge* issue here. Putting a Joyn app on your phone (even if it's unlocked and owned by you, not subsidised & owned by DT) basically gives it access to pretty much *everything*. It massively over-reaches what most users will feel comfortable giving up control over.
There is absolutely no way that I would install this personally - why does the operator think it has a right to snoop on what other applications I have running locally on my phone? That's hugely invasive and "none of their business", especially if it's a device I've bought through a retail channel and own outright, rather than received subsidised.
Worse, because Joyn is intended as a unifying brand for RCS, it only needs one telco's version to misuse these permissions, and the rest of the industry gets tarred with the same brush.
In fact, this all raises huge questions about what rights you sign away when you buy a subsidised and customised phone through operator channels. It reminds me a bit of the discussion a few years ago about buying laptops from telcos, where some were proposing to monitor/control what apps you were allowed to use. It makes me much more understanding of Apple's rigorous policies on what authorised AppStore apps are allowed to do.
Joyn appears to have been designed with the assumption that it will be the primary communications app/UI on the phone, rather than assume parity & coexistence with all the others. Again, perhaps fair enough if you buy a phone from an operator, but if it's *my* phone/tablet and I download it independently, then I expect apps to behave themselves and "know their place". It all seems massively arrogant & will see user push-back, even when it finally works. Joyn needs to prove its usefulness & earn trust, before gradually extending its reach with user consent.
(I'm also imaging the havoc that users with dual-SIM devices will experience, if they've got Joyn apps from both operators. Also, it's not clear to me what happens when users SIM-swap - do they need to delete one operator's Joyn app and download the other?)
Of course, there are plenty of reasons besides this why RCS / Joyn is destined to fail. But given that various telcos have been sneering at WhatsApp and Facebook for privacy violations, they perhaps should step out of the glasshouse themselves first.
**Edit 3/2/13: apparently, some versions of Joyn can't even be deleted or uninstalled from phones, especially Android sold through operator channels. This is a huge mistake, especially as the update cycle is so slow. Consider the scenario where there is public uproar (unexpectedly) about a Joyn feature for some reason - privacy, performance, misuse, costs or whatever. If it is sufficiently bad, it may be justification for people to return the phone as unfit-for-purpose and exchange it for a non-Joyn device - which would be very costly for the operator.
(If you're an operator CTO or CFO reading this, and you're skeptical about RCS / Joyn and want good arguments to avoid wasting money on it, please contact me about workshops or consulting advisory services)
But the past week or so has thrown up a ton of issues that I feel need to be addressed.
The first one is the absolutely ridiculous hyperbole about Joyn being a "done deal", which will no doubt reach a crescendo around MWC in a few weeks' time. I've seen a number of vendor blogs, press articles and other missives that take the tone of "everyone agrees that Joyn is wonderful and inevitable", in a fashion reminiscent of a 1950s Soviet propaganda poster.
Take for example PR/marketing firm Redmill Communications' line: "When we talk to people about it, it’s clear that RCS is just something that ought to be done." Well, I guess that depends which people you talk to, but I certainly encounter a large amount of skepticism or outright derision about RCS, among both vendors and operators. Perhaps unsurprisingly, messaging vendor Acision's house blog is similarly gushing about RCS.
To be fair, others have been more sanguine, with The Register slating Joyn's chances and quoting OpenCloud with a line that I would have been proud of myself "RCS is bringing virtually nothing, and it has taken them five years to do it". Somewhere in the middle is Kineto (disclosure: a client) which is trying to blend RCS with Telco-OTT concepts and some additional features and capabilities in its Smart Comms app. Taking *some* of the RCS capabilities and concepts, and running them as an app in OTT-style form, makes a lot more sense than the branded, cross-operator Joyn approach.
The next few weeks will undoubtedly see a continued gush of hype before Barcelona. I suspect there's a central push recommended by the GSMA's marketing people to "fake it till you make it" - basically just pretend that it's all inevitable, in the vague (and vain) hope of creating a self-fulfilling prophesy. Lots of opportunities for small boys wanting to spot naked emperors.
All of which must have gone left anyway, with DT's apparent kicking of the RCS ball into the long grass, using the damning phrase "delayed indefinitely" and seemingly blamed on Android implementation/fragmentation difficulties.
It's a bit difficult to tell if it is referencing native integration of Joyn into T-Mobile's own supplied Android phones, or the performance of the aftermarket app for download onto other devices. (Germany has a quite high proportion of prepay users without subsidised phones, often bought through non-operator channels).
Either way, I can think of a few possible areas of problems that DT is finding with implementation, not least because it looks like Joyn apps are both complex and deeply invasive into the Android OS. I hadn't really looked at what is "under the hood" for RCS applications, and I was pretty surprised / shocked with what I found.
Have a look at the Vodafone & MetroPCS Joyn app descriptions on Google Play, click the "permissions" tab, scroll down and "show all".
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.metropcs.rcsmetro&hl=en
and
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.summit.beam&hl=en
Basically, if someone installs Joyn, it gives the operator the right to pretty much control the whole phone, especially the communications elements - not just send & receive SMS, but read their contents and the archive too. It can report which other apps are running, read the call log, check your calendar and assorted other capabilities. Indeed, the MetroPCS ones ask for permission to "Draw over other apps" ("Allows the app to draw on top of other applications or parts of the user interface. They may interfere with your use of the interface in any application, or change what you think you are seeing in other applications)".
If you compare the Joyn apps' required permissions with rival apps on Play, you'll see it needs much more access. I had a look at Skype, Whatsapp, Tango, Line etc - only Viber comes close in terms of permissions it needs.
Leaving aside the privacy and control issues for a second, this also suggests that Joyn is a pretty heavyweight app, needing a large amount of testing as it has so many tentacles throughout the phone. Add in the fact that each operator will have their own features and implementations, and you can see huge scope for bugs, interoperability issues (ironic) and privacy invasions.
Lastly, privacy and control is going to be a *huge* issue here. Putting a Joyn app on your phone (even if it's unlocked and owned by you, not subsidised & owned by DT) basically gives it access to pretty much *everything*. It massively over-reaches what most users will feel comfortable giving up control over.
There is absolutely no way that I would install this personally - why does the operator think it has a right to snoop on what other applications I have running locally on my phone? That's hugely invasive and "none of their business", especially if it's a device I've bought through a retail channel and own outright, rather than received subsidised.
Worse, because Joyn is intended as a unifying brand for RCS, it only needs one telco's version to misuse these permissions, and the rest of the industry gets tarred with the same brush.
In fact, this all raises huge questions about what rights you sign away when you buy a subsidised and customised phone through operator channels. It reminds me a bit of the discussion a few years ago about buying laptops from telcos, where some were proposing to monitor/control what apps you were allowed to use. It makes me much more understanding of Apple's rigorous policies on what authorised AppStore apps are allowed to do.
Joyn appears to have been designed with the assumption that it will be the primary communications app/UI on the phone, rather than assume parity & coexistence with all the others. Again, perhaps fair enough if you buy a phone from an operator, but if it's *my* phone/tablet and I download it independently, then I expect apps to behave themselves and "know their place". It all seems massively arrogant & will see user push-back, even when it finally works. Joyn needs to prove its usefulness & earn trust, before gradually extending its reach with user consent.
(I'm also imaging the havoc that users with dual-SIM devices will experience, if they've got Joyn apps from both operators. Also, it's not clear to me what happens when users SIM-swap - do they need to delete one operator's Joyn app and download the other?)
Of course, there are plenty of reasons besides this why RCS / Joyn is destined to fail. But given that various telcos have been sneering at WhatsApp and Facebook for privacy violations, they perhaps should step out of the glasshouse themselves first.
**Edit 3/2/13: apparently, some versions of Joyn can't even be deleted or uninstalled from phones, especially Android sold through operator channels. This is a huge mistake, especially as the update cycle is so slow. Consider the scenario where there is public uproar (unexpectedly) about a Joyn feature for some reason - privacy, performance, misuse, costs or whatever. If it is sufficiently bad, it may be justification for people to return the phone as unfit-for-purpose and exchange it for a non-Joyn device - which would be very costly for the operator.
(If you're an operator CTO or CFO reading this, and you're skeptical about RCS / Joyn and want good arguments to avoid wasting money on it, please contact me about workshops or consulting advisory services)
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