Multimedia messaging bids for market share

The International Herald Tribune writes about the market for multimedia messaging services (MMS) and predicts "a new boom could be on the horizon, now that many technical issues have been resolved and now that a critical mass of people have phones that can send and receive multimedia messages, or MMS, which combine text, sounds, images and video."

According to In-Stat, "11 billion multimedia messages will be sent worldwide this year, generating about $2 billion in revenue." And the carriers are beefing up the services that can take advantage of MMS. In-Stat predicts that Europe will generate 41 percent of all MMS revenue by 2009 with the Americas grabbing a 36 percent share and the Asia-Pacific region 23 percent.

For MMS to truly take off, certain issues must be resolved. Ovum wrote in an earlier report that "Most of all, the price must be right. In some countries, it is still far too high."

David Chamberlain at In-Stat chimed in "It is still too difficult to send an MMS, the price is still too high, it's too time-consuming and not particularly intuitive."

Informa Telecoms & Media put things in better perspective, when it predicted MMS "will grab only 20 percent of the revenue pie from messaging - which includes text, MMS, e-mail and instant message services - by 2009, up from 11 percent this year." Richard Jesty at Informa said, "MMS is not going to take over the world, but it will continue to grow in the next five years."