Is MMS dead?

Of course multimedia messaging service (MMS) isn’t completely dead – some MMS capabilities are in use in some markets. But the promise of MMS hasn’t been realized and its time is running out.

MMS is a logical extension of short message service (SMS). Mobile operators and mobile equipment vendors were taken by surprise when text messaging (based on SMS) exploded. SMS was part of the original global system for mobile communication (GSM) design but was never envisioned as a major service in and of itself. However, once text messaging took off, a multimedia extension made perfect sense. Unfortunately, mobile operators appear to have missed some obvious lessons from the SMS explosion and their behavior today is slowing MMS adoption in many markets.

Several lessons stand out. First, in country after country, the actual explosion in text messaging only occurred after there was national interoperability. In other words, people wanted to communicate but they needed to know that it would work. If you can send a message to any phone number, it’s worth a try. If the service is useful or less expensive, you may try again. But if you can only send a message to another person who uses the same service provider or only to people with a specific handset models or special service plans, it’s much less likely that you will even try. There are two issues here.

First, it is human nature to avoid things that take extra thought. This is the reason people pay more for flat-rate bundles of messages – it means they don’t have to think about the cost on a message-by-message basis. The same idea applies to incomplete connectivity. If all your friends have mobile phones, but only some of them can be reached with a new messaging service, it’s an extra uncertainty that causes most people to just skip the whole thing.

Second, the viral spread of any new service is far more effective than any marketing campaign, but viral adoption requires that messages get passed as widely as possible. Again, even if you adopt the service, if you only communicate with a few specific people, there will be no viral spread.

So what’s the story with services based on MMS?

Today, there are many kinds of multimedia messages, so we have confusion about service brands and service functions. Actual services based on MMS include picture mail, voice SMS and video messaging. Unlike text messaging, not all phones can receive all messages. Especially with video messaging, there are differences in screen resolution and available video codecs. This means for some services, you can’t know that the other party will be able to receive your message.

But worse, some operators seem to go out of their way to make things difficult. In the Philippines, MMS services don’t work until a subscriber registers their handset with the operator’s MMS equipment. While registration is a relatively simple process conducted via SMS, only half the people with MMS-capable handsets have enabled MMS. This is nuts. All subscribers should be enabled if you expect to get a service adopted.

Even more critical, in many countries, MMS-based services only work on specific operator networks. Picture mail services are notorious for this, as operators try to encourage subscribers to upload recently taken photographs to their picture service instead of an Internet service like Flickr or Photobucket. In the US, Sprint offers a voice SMS service, but imposes the triple handicap that it only works with other Sprint subscribers and only those that have a specific kind of handset and only those who have signed up for the service. The result? Virtually no one uses the service.

There are more than two dozen countries where “Voice SMS” services have been introduced, based not on MMS, but on a combination of SMS and voice telephony. The resulting service works with any handset and any network. These services are doing very well, while MMS-based Voice SMS services are, so far, a failure.

And that’s not all. There is another area where operators don’t seem to have noticed lessons from SMS that apply equally to MMS-based services: price. Text message adoption was facilitated by low prices, especially at introduction. In most countries an SMS message costs less than a one-minute voice call. In the Philippines, SMS messages were actually free until they were well on the way to popularity. When charging began, messages still cost less than a one-minute voice call and there were plenty of plans that gave bundles of messages (thus no need to think about what an individual message was going to cost). SMS in the Philippines is worthy of attention as, today, the Philippines has the highest per-person use of SMS in the world.

So it’s pretty clear what operators could do to foster MMS-based services. First, enable every handset and interoperate with every network. Second, start with low rates (and free promotional packages) until you build a user base and can understand what people are willing to pay. This is not hard to understand, but operators are missing the boat and time is running out.

We are already seeing a surge in 3G mobile Internet access and operators are responding with increasingly affordable flat-rate 3G data plans. Once people have fast, affordable access to the public Internet, it’s unlikely mobile operators will be able to compete with Internet companies for new person-to-person services. If MMS-based services are not popular by then, MMS will be dead.