‘All thumbs’ approach to messaging will mean more pressure on operators

Ghost-written article for Steve Buck, Vodafone & LogicaCMG.
Published somewhere in the UK, 2003.

Any network operator expecting personalised content or MMS-based functionality to be a hassle-free source of increased revenue may be in for a nasty shock. Whilst it’s true that manufacturers increasing the choice of camera or MMS-compatible handsets will ensure more users are introduced to the functionality, there are underlying problems with it. Everyone can see the potential of personalised content on mobile handsets, but who has mastered its delivery in a way that consumers actually like?

According to all the network operators I’ve spoken to this year, most consumers try MMS once or twice, have the service fail, and then give up – never to use it again. In general, consumers expect all new technology to be ‘plug and play’, especially when used to a diet of Instant Messenger, free web-based e-mail services, and the Vodafone “Live” and O2 “Active” offerings. They want it now, and don’t expect to have to spend any more than a few minutes learning how to use it. The reality of MMS alone is some way from this, and with the way things are developing it looks as if things will get worse before they get better.

There are likely to be over 100 different MMS-capable phones by the end of this year, many of which aren’t mainstream - Danger, or Alphacell for example.

It gets worse.

These 100+ handsets all use different formats for the three potential parts of MMS – sound, still image, and video. In moving image, you have the Windows vs. RealPlayer battle – RAM, MPG, MOV etc. For still images, handsets could be using JPG, TIFF, GIF, BMP, or another alternative. Then there is sound, just when you thought it couldn’t get any more complicated. All in all, you already have thousands of possible combinations of MMS ‘DNA’ if you will, and that’s only based on existing formats.

Unfortunately, even if MMS formats were to be standardised tomorrow, it still wouldn’t solve the problem. Different handsets interpret MMS in a different presentation order, regardless of the format those three parts arrive in. Ironically, the technology at the heart of the problem that is making consumers and operators grimace alike, is synchronised multimedia integration language (SMIL), which is pronounced, "smile." SMIL was introduced in 1998 as a document type of XML, designed to ensure the audio, video and graphics elements were executed sequentially or in parallel. Unfortunately it wasn’t designed for use in MMS, which is why you get radically different results when you send MMS from, say, a SonyEriccson T68i to three different handsets.

For example, a Panasonic GD87 would cramp the sound part of the MMS to the same length of time that the first video frame lasted, resulting in truncated sound. A Sharp GX-10, conversely, would stretch the first frame of video to the length of the sound, resulting in good sound but a stalled moving picture. If a Nokia 7210 received the MMS, it simply wouldn’t play back at all. The consumer is not going to get the service they expect.

The problems are likely to multiply because there is no industry-wide testing process in place. Handset vendors are ignoring the MMS Conformance Document v2.0.0 because they want their products to market faster, and because the document is already out of date. For example, it makes no allowance for ring tone standardisation, but there is nothing new that can be enforced to ensure this problem does not spiral out of control.

Consumers using MMS will expect the same they get with SMS – an instant message and instant response. SMS catches up with the recipient wherever they are and a one-letter reply, ‘y’ or ‘n’, can acknowledge that an instruction is understood. Consumers expect MMS to do exactly the same, so no-one will be satisfied if an MMS takes up to 30 minutes to be delivered, which some are at the moment.

In order to solve handset problems then the common factor to consider, from the consumer’s point of view, is speed. Everything must be as it is on the web – just a few clicks away. Obtaining content should be completely menu-driven, not short code driven. The thin line will have to be trod between making content available and spamming, but this can be achieved. It just needs to be intuitive – MMS needs something like the purpose hotbar.com fulfils for e-mail. Content could be offered via means of the mobile handset equivalent of the BBC News Ticker on a PC desktop – available without interfering. Get this right, and there might be real revenue in MMS or content provision after all.