MMS to overtake SMS, says Cousins

By mid-2005, multimedia messaging service (MMS) revenue will grow to well over $4 billion, taking a large portion of revenue previously made by short messaging service (SMS), says Gary Cousins, Clickatell key sales consultant.

Cousins says one of the main reasons for the projected growth is that businesses will use MMS more than SMS in communicating with their employees and customers.

"The reason for the projected growth is that MMS offers so much more than SMS. MMS has a host of additional features, including rich text, colour, animated graphics, sound clips, photographs and video clips."

Cousins says that coupled with the mobile camera phone, users are going to find many more uses for MMS than SMS.

"One of the new fashions overseas is the phenomenon called 'fone blogging`. This involves a Web site or 'fone blog` which is updated with content from a mobile phone via MMS.

"If a user were to go on holiday, they could take pictures with their phone and place them on their fone blog via MMS. Friends or family could then view the pictures and news on the Internet," he says.

Cousins says MMS can be used by businesses to push interactive marketing to cellphones and send reminders to customers. It could also be used in customer relationship management and content delivery of logos and information like news updates and games.

"Mobile messaging is also more personal, with most messages almost always opened by the intended recipient and achieving as much as a 20% response rate. The added functionality of MMS will make it an even more useful tool for businesses."

Cousins says it is unlikely mobile messaging will be used to send spam because of the cost of sending messages, whereas e-mail is free.

However, he notes that companies will have to ensure they address consumer demand if MMS is to grow.

"Customer satisfaction when it comes to screen size, operability, cost and practical benefits will be key to the success of MMS."

Cousins was speaking at the First Tuesday event held earlier this week at the Sandton Convention Centre.