Interoperable MMS set to explode

Perhaps the most significant news to emerge from last month's CTIA I.T. Wireless & Entertainment conference came in the form of a casual, almost offhand, remark made by the organization's president and CEO, Steve Largent, during his Tuesday morning address. In between CTIA announcements, wireless market projections and keynote speeches, Largent told the crowd that in the previous week, U.S. carriers had agreed to guidelines enabling multimedia messaging service, or MMS, interoperability and that inter-carrier messaging would be a reality by year's end.

What Largent failed to mention is that with interoperability in place, perhaps the most significant barrier to widespread MMS adoption and use will be reduced to rubble. History tells us that short messaging services (SMS) found a foothold with U.S. consumers only after carriers agreed to text messaging interoperability, and conventional wisdom suggests that MMS will follow the same narrative arc. At the same CTIA address, Largent said that fully 96% of all handsets sold in the U.S. are data-capable — now, thanks to interoperability, users are on the cusp of discovering everything those devices are capable of doing.

All of which sets up 2005 as a defining year in the maturation of the mobile multimedia applications market. The big picture is about tiny pictures: Interoperability ensures users will snap and send more photos now that they can send them to anyone else with a camera phone. Though still primitive, streaming video is also gaining a foothold.

Ringtones are expected to generate $3.5 billion in revenue in 2004, a 40% increase over last year, and there's no end in sight. Ringtones are a significant source of income not just for wireless firms but also the music business, now accounting for 10% of the record industry's overall revenue. Expect labels and artists to license and market ringtones and related music content more actively than ever in the months to come. Carriers will also begin marketing ringbacks — ringtones in reverse that replace the traditional ring heard by callers with audio clips.

Perhaps most important, content developers and aggregators will rely less on adapting existing media content to fit the wireless model and instead build portfolios highlighted by titles created specifically for consumption via mobile devices. New entrants like Def Jam Mobile are developing ringtone remixes and the like expressly for distribution over wireless channels. And as more and more musicians, filmmakers and artists begin to view wireless not merely as a means to earn revenues from existing work but also as an entirely new platform for creative expression, the quantity and quality of mobile content will rise significantly.

Mobile gaming should also prove huge in 2005, thanks to a growing catalog of multiplayer games — not only traditional racing and first-person shooter titles but also fantasy sports, a fast-growing niche. And eye-popping 3-D graphics will far surpass user expectations fostered by traditional hand-held gaming devices.

But an old problem continues dogging wireless applications: handset battery life. Batteries simply aren't keeping pace with Moore's Law. You can give subscribers all the next-generation bells and whistles you want, but if those video clips and games mean there's no power left to make plain old voice calls, you can bet subscribers will keep the multimedia consumption to a minimum — and the wireless industry will be powerless to stop them.