The big MMS picture
Emerging Multimedia Messaging Service is a stalking horse for deeper issues
CURRENTLY, USERS HAVE a choice of e-mail, IM, and SMS (Short Messaging Service) on cell phones and some converged devices. Now, the industry, or most of it, is gearing up for another channel, MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service). Some observers call MMS the follow-on to SMS. SMS, however, may never go away, considering its cost of 10 cents per message versus estimates of 30 cents per message with MMS.
MMS will allow users to attach pictures and audio clips to a message and send it to another MMS-capable cell phone. There are a few already available from Nokia and Sony Ericsson.
Mike Wehrs, director of the mobile device division at Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft, believes that it is not in the best interest of end-users, high-tech companies, or the telecom industry to offer divergent messaging channels on wireless devices. He says that it is cumbersome and confusing to require users to preselect the channel they want to use before sending a message.
The geographic proximity of Microsoft and Redmond-based AT&T Wireless Services (AWS) doesn’t mean there is a meeting of minds over the value of MMS. At this point, MMS requires a capital investment from wireless carriers — the installation of a network component to support the technology — and AWS is in the midst of installing the necessary hardware, according to AWS spokesman Jeremy Pemble. The company is not about to turn its back on a potential revenue stream. Is sending a picture of the kids on the beach to their grandparents worth 30 cents? Try telling your mother it’s not.
But Wehrs puts down MMS capabilities, saying you will only be able to send and receive a thumbnail picture, and as with SMS, it will take anywhere from a second to 24 hours to receive the message.
Twenty-four hours sounds a bit extreme, but I suppose because SMS gets only “best effort” support over the control channel from the carriers, it is possible.
“It’s dependent on how busy the operators are,” Wehrs told me.
MMS, like SMS, does not use e-mail’s SMTP. In that sense, it is a closed system.
So why is Microsoft’s Wehrs so strongly against MMS as it is currently configured? Is he right that the path for communications should be focused on a single standard that makes it easy on the user, or is there another reason? Are Microsoft strategists concerned lest SMS and MMS become so useful that e-mail will not have a place on cell phones? No e-mail, no Mobile Outlook, and perhaps no need for even a Pocket PC 2002 Phone Edition-enabled phone. Even farther down the road, can the carriers use MMS as a transport and a protocol for corporate apps?
The high-tech industry is a fascinating game of chess. There are no good guys; only winners. The winner, as far as I can tell, is going to be the company that can anticipate and react best.
Where does that leave customers? Irrelevant, isn’t it?
