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Profiting from mobile multimedia services: how to gain first-mover advantages. (MMS).

Article Excerpt
The success of SMS was somewhat of a surprise when it quickly proved itself as a high-value service. The rollout of new color mobile handsets by all operators is poised to do the same for MMS and picture messaging.

If the success of Short Messaging Service (SMS) is any indication, the delivery of Multimedia Messaging Services (MMS) will likely create explosive demand for 2.5G and 3G mobile data services. Rapid adoption of SMS was a surprise success and those providers that offered early services captured the market.

Mobile data operators cannot afford to have a massively popular service sneak up on them in today's economic climate. Many operators are now in the planning stages of designing MMS capabilities, and these services will gradually be announced over the next year.

Successful deployment of MMS depends on a next-generation network infrastructure that enables service delivery and the ability to offer pricing based on metrics that are meaningful to the customer. Since MMS is in its infancy, the exact nature of these services and their infrastructure requirements is not yet completely clear. Operators are left analyzing market conditions and planning for deployments as best they can so they can evolve their network to offer exciting new services.

However, during these times of uncertainty, there are opportunities for network operators to assess market opportunities and infrastructure requirements so they can gain first-mover advantages in the delivery of MMS.

Capitalizing on Transaction-Based Pricing Models

The success of SMS has shown the popularity of transaction-based or event-based services and pricing models. SMS has quickly proven itself as a high-value service. It allows subscribers to send and receive brief messages over the control channel, usually of less than 160 characters, and can be flexibly offered on a flat-rate or usage-based charging model.

Operators profiting from SMS can now look to use transaction-based pricing for MMS so subscribers can send messages...