The Next Picture Messaging Boom

[Mike Temporale]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.forbes.com/personaltech/2004/03/16/cx_pp_0316picturemessaging.html?partner=yahoo&referrer=' target='_blank'>http://www.forbes.com/personaltech/2004/03/16/cx_pp_0316picturemessaging.html?partner=yahoo&referrer=</a><br /><br /></div>"Camera phones may be popular, but one of that technology's biggest market opportunities has yet to become a reality: users swapping snapshots between different wireless carriers. <br /><br />It's not only the carriers that stand to profit from this development, but also the companies that supply the products and services that will make such interoperability possible. <br /><br />By the end of 2004, consumers will have sent 3.8 billion multimedia messages, which are mostly photographs, according to research outfit IDC. That's astounding considering that camera phones didn't even hit the U.S. market in a meaningful way until 2003, and that U.S. users still can't send pictures to phones on different networks such as Verizon Wireless and AT&T Wireless"<br /><br />Forbes has an interesting article on the current state of picture phones and who is profiting from them.

[TANKERx]

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My amazement at how far behind the American mobile phone systems are is forever increasing. I can't understand why this should be - not that I've looked much into it. But how many networks are there in the US compared to (for example) the UK yet I don't have to ask someone "what network are you on?" before I can send them an MMS.

Is it a GSM thing or just a cultural thing or a broader technology thing or what?

[encece]

I didnt read the article yet but had a thought while reading.

Why dont they make camera phones with seperate cameras they work over Bluetooth?

phone is in your pocket.
take pics with the camera
sends and stores pics on phone where you can send it as MMS or email, etc.

The camera can be left in the car in places where you cant use it.

The camera should be small and fairly cheap but you could still have the option for using a better quality camera with BT as well.

Thinking out loud....sorry

[ShivShanks]

Is it a GSM thing or just a cultural thing or a broader technology thing or what?

None of those. Its a bloody greed and carrier lock in thing. And us stupid US consumers who take it lying down. You see there is nothing technologically preventing anyone to interoperate. After all most data services use IP networks and its not like they are going over incompatible technolgies. They just have to come up with common formats and app protocols, which isn't that difficult to achieve. All this talk about clearing houses is just nonsensical red herrings IMHO. Hey did we need clearing houses for email? So what if one server has to connect to 100 different ones? E-Mail servers don't have any issues connecting with any number of other servers. Why would a picture mail messaging server have any problems? In fact you don't even need any of that at the simplest level. All you need is a custom simple email client on each phone that can send picture attachments. They just don't want to. They want their customers to be locked into long contracts and technologies specific to them. See how long it has taken for number portability to come through? And see how we still don't have phone portability? Again we americans are suckers for taking all this lying down and not suing the cell phone carriers to clean up their acts and stop taking customers for a ride. Unless we all wake up and complain to the FCC or threaten lawsuits nothing will happen I tell you.

Another reason is that the US is a large country and so big carriers can dominate like this. In Europe there is an onus on interoperability since there are many countries and many small and medium carriers. It would be a mess if all of them went their own way. In fact that was how it was before GSM. Thankfully they saw sense and decided that the next generation technology would have interoperability as one of the design goals. So GSM and all subsequent technologies are designed like that. In the US no one cared with the big carriers calling the shots and the FCC sleeping at the wheel. Its just nuts I tell you. The government either interferes too much in the telecom sector here or not enough. The FCC got burned by interfering too much in the telecom sector in the 80's and now is so wary of interfering that it has pretty much become a sissy till recently. Thankfully its now doing something like the phone number portability. But ultimately unless we the customers show the carriers that we mean business they aren't going to move fast.