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Eircell Vodafone is to launch Multimedia Messaging Services (MMS) in the middle of this year following a deal between its parent and Ericsson.
Vodafone Group, Eircell Vodafone's parent company, said on Wednesday that it had signed a global agreement with Ericsson for it to supply the mobile operator's MMS software. MMS is described as the next generation of SMS, which has proved hugely popular with mobile users.
According to Vodafone, its MMS service will allow customers to compose, send and receive the advanced data messages from MMS-enabled mobile devices, WAP devices and PCs. Users will be able to avail of and view messages with rich content such as audio and video clips, photographs, and text messaging with images.
Vodafone said that MMS will also enable customers to receive and send value-added content such as share price graphs, birthday cards, picture postcards, animated cartoons and multi-media presentations.
Pricing details for the service are not currently available. However MMS is expected to be noticeably more expensive then SMS, since the service requires far more data to be sent over networks then current messaging applications require.
"It will allow users to send much more interesting and much more valuable messages," Jon Earl, Vodafone's senior investor manager, told ElectricNews.Net.
The MMS service from Vodafone will initially be rolled-out in Ireland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Holland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the UK, with it to follow in a number of other markets in which Vodafone operates.
To initially avail of the MMS service in Ireland, however, Eircell Vodafone customers will have to purchase an MMS-enabled phone. Such phones are not expected to become mass market items until next year. Nokia, for instance, launched an MMS phone in November 2001, but said it didn't expect MMS to become an integral feature in all of its new phones until 2003. The only other MMS phone on the market at present is Ericsson's T68.
Vodafone's Jon Earl said though that the company was working on "a system" that will allow all of its customer base to take advantage of MMS. Although Earl said he could not elaborate, Vodafone may follow Nokia's lead in this area. The mobile phone company is planning to open MMS terminals for people to send and receive MMS messages until the phones become more common. An MMS user will be able to send a message to a friend on an ordinary phone, but the recipient will get an SMS message with a URL of a Web site where the message can be picked up.
It is widely believed that MMS will repeat the success of SMS and be a major revenue generator for mobile operators. According to the GSM Association, MMS will lead the way to profit in 2.5G/3G for mobile operators just like SMS has done in 2G.
It was, however, thought that mobile operators would evolve from SMS to EMS (Enhanced Messaging Service). EMS allows users to "add life" to text message in the form of colour images, melodies and animations. For instance, when an exclamation mark appears in an enhanced message, a piece of music would be played.
Although Earl says that Vodafone considers EMS to be part of MMS, Mark Blowers, a senior researcher at UK-based analyst firm The Butler Group, told ElectricNews.Net in November 2001, that he would be surprised if operators didn't offer EMS before MMS.
"SMS has been very lucrative for mobile carriers so there is a lot of interest in its successor, MMS. But, it will be about two years before MMS is in widespread use. It will come much more into its own with a 3G device as GPRS is more limited in its applications," commented Blowers at the time.
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