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Multimedia Messaging: First, Global Beachheads

by sue marek
July/August 2001

Thanks to the latest in multimedia messaging technology, subscribers soon will be able to transmit audio, video, photos and other images–perhaps the familiar, goofy vacation pics–directly from their wireless handset to (presumably) loved ones. The technology is similar to how short messaging service files are transferred.

The ability to engage in this sort of frivolity, however, doesn’t mean consumers will pay for it.

Some analysts have their doubts, particularly since SMS hasn’t caught on in the United States. But infrastructure and handset companies such as Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia, Siemens, CMG, Comverse and Logica are pushing ahead with their MMS initiatives, hoping to convince carriers that MMS will be as popular, and generate as much revenue, as SMS has in Europe.

“Down the road, MMS might have potential,” says Knox Bricken, an analyst with the Yankee Group. “But right now, I think there is a learning curve. MMS seems like a lot of hype.”

Not everyone is immediately focusing on the U.S. market. Companies such as Logica, a supplier of messaging systems, see MMS as a huge opportunity first in Asia, where multimedia content already is popular, and in Europe, where SMS is a bona fide success.

Fred Jones, manager of new product introduction and business development for Logica, has his sights on Japan. “Person-to-person messaging and multimedia content is hugely popular [there],” he says. “That’s where MMS will be quite lucrative.”

Once SMS makes headway in the United States, particularly as network interoperability issues are resolved, Logica sees MMS gaining ground. “SMS as a platform is evolving and once subscribers are used to using SMS for communication, it’s not too far to jump to MMS,” says Simon Holmes, Logica’s product market manager for messaging. “The U.S. is slightly behind, but it’s catching up.”

Not everyone views MMS as a consumer application. For Comverse, which makes messaging software and platforms, MMS will likely attract enterprise customers, particularly those who require visual images for day-to-day operations, such as engineers, surveyors or realtors. That means making MMS not just a wireless service, but a unified messaging service that lets subscribers access their multimedia messages from several different devices such as their wireless phone, home computer or even their television set.

“MMS is not about communication between terminals, but communication between people,” says Jonathan Shoham, Comverse’s marketing director. Comverse currently is working with a European wireless operator to deliver MMS via its GPRS network.

One big obstacle to commercial viability in Europe: a working revenue model. Shoham sees MMS being billed like SMS, with charges based on per-character or per-message usage. But SMS’s European popularity derives in part from its low cost and few see MMS being as inexpensive, because it takes more bandwidth to send multimedia files. The hurdle: Subscribers sending MMS messages on a per-packet basis won’t know ahead of time how much a file will cost. “Customers don’t want to end the month with a big phone bill because each picture they sent was priced differently,” Shoham says.

Until pricing issues are resolved, it is unlikely that MMS will gain ground, especially in the United States, with its nascent SMS market. And with subscribers still not convinced of the reliability or viability of basic SMS, it’s unlikely they will trust wireless to transmit work-oriented visuals, let alone family vacation photos.