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Sofia Digital marries MMS and television
Tuesday, September 24 2002
by Andrew McLindon


A Finnish company has developed a system that enables MMS messages to be
broadcast over digital television.









 



Sofia Digital said its Amigo MMS offering makes it possible to display pictures
sent from an MMS mobile telephone on digital television using Multimedia Home
Platform, which is an open standard for digital TV that is being used in Finland
and Germany. 

 



According to Sofia, MMS, which has been described as the next-generation of text
messaging, offers both broadcasters and mobile operators potentially lucrative
revenue streams because it allows pictorial content to be sent by consumers. Its
system does not, however, presently allow broadcasters to send such messages to
viewers. 

 



"We expect MMS to become a big hit with mobile users and MMS and TV is a great
fit because of the visual nature of television," said Visa Noronen,
communications manager with Sofia Digital. "Amigo MMS will give TV companies
and operators the opportunity to earn money from this by, for example, setting-up
MMS-enabled television programmes and services and charging people for sending
text and images to them."



 

Sofia plans to offer the service to television broadcasters and mobile operators
across Europe, and Noronen told ElectricNews.Net that several such businesses
have expressed interest in it. The system is currently being tested by
Radiolinja, which is one of Finland's largest mobile operators. 



 

Such an advance is likely to be welcomed by television companies who have already
discovered that SMS can deliver unexpectedly high revenues. 

 

Channel 4, for instance, received over 6.5 million SMS messages during the latest
instalment of Big Brother. Around half of these were eviction votes, which cost
around STG0.25 each, while the remainder were requests for Big Brother news,
logos etc, which cost anywhere between STG0.25 and STG1.50 each.

 



According to Ashley Smith, senior research analyst with Dutch research company
and consultancy Van Dusseldorp Partners, it is the latter type of services that
broadcasters will embrace most when using MMS. 

 



"Television companies will not be too keen to allow their shows to be taken
over by MMS, which is, after all, a more visual medium than SMS. Although they
will encourage viewers to send in pictures and messages via MMS, and charge them
for doing so, they are more likely to push out content such as images from inside
the Big Brother house or downloads of goals to viewers, which they can also make
money from," said Smith.

 



Although Smith expects MMS offerings to be successful for television companies,
he doesn't believe that they will eclipse SMS. "For simple procedures like vote
in evictions then it is much easier to use SMS. Both SMS and MMS will co-exist
for some time to come," he said.