First there was unified messaging, now there is integrated messaging and adaptive messaging.
Integrated messaging is about tieing up a user’s different messaging options, SMS, MMS, email, IM and voice into one integrated interface, and the adaptive part is that he can reply to one channel using any other technology, without having to quit and launch applications on his handset and even without having to choose which technology to use.
The concept is attractive to operators because they hope it will encourage the increased use of messaging applications to offset the widely anticipated decline in SMS revenues.
Alon Schwartzman, Director of Product Development for Openwave, said that adaptive messaging offered an opportunity to integrated other services, such as content launches.
“SMS revenues are flattening, and operators are asking how they can bridge that gap and generate new revenues?
“When operators have launched services in the past, such as MMS, it has been done in a siloed way, not integrated into other messaging services. With mobile email, IM and video messaging operators are starting to make sure they don’t repeat the same mistakes.”
Schwartzman said the concept requires an evolution in the network, as well as in the UI.
“Mobile email is one of the first to be deployed,” he said, and the idea is to get a different experience on the end user interface.”
But how to deliver integrated messaging in a profitable way is the question.
Some operators, such as Telefonica Moviles, are having success with a model that delivers the header of an email to a user for free. If the user then wants to download the whole email to his phone then he pays to do so.
Alfonso Perea, Director Messaging Services Development for Telefonica Movile, told Mobile Europe that it has integrated online email accounts from Telefonica, Movistar and other Spanish ISPs into its mobile offering. The big hurdle, he admitted, was to be able to interface with the liks of MSN, Yahoo! and Google.
Martin Gosling, general manager, EMEA, for Fast Mobile, which uses a proprietary protocol, and handset client, to deliver different messaging technologies over a single pipe into a handset, says that another hurdle to overcome lies within operators themselves.
“This industry is really in its infancy. Within operators there is an email specialist, and and IM specialist, and this is where it gets confusing. Users risk getting a bill for emails, a bill for IM, and so on. So people higher up the chain are saying, “Let’s take all the different messaging modes and merge them together.
“At this point no-one has found the perfect billing model. Our statement into the network gives operators the number of emails, MMS, MSS, IMs and voice IMs and the operator can take that and charge separately or bundle together. What they don’t want to do is give away email today as they made need to bill for them tomorrow.”