instant messaging
So, why the sudden interest in Personal IM? Is it just a knee-jerk reaction or a logical progression from SMS? Tony Dennis asks the questions.
Mobile instant messaging couldn’t conceivably be described as a new phenomenon – especially given the number of mobile phones shipping from the leading handset vendors with an IM (Instant Messaging) capability already built-in. So why the sudden interest in IM at the recent 3GSM Barcelona Show when 15 operators signed 32 letters of intent to interconnect their IM networks? Is IM the answer to SMS’ lack of technical sophistication? Will IM merely cannibalise SMS’ revenues? Or are there other motives behind GSM operators’ decision to rapidly embrace instant messaging?
In an almost unprecedented display of unity, eight of the world’s largest operators appeared together at a 3GSM Press conference to launch Personal IM – a standard for mobile instant messaging promoted by the GSM Association. All but one – China Mobile – have their roots back in Europe. This might suggest that European operators were merely attempting to catch up with North America where research by Morgan Stanley and Comscore Media Matrix has shown that instant messaging is the third most popular activity among Internet users after browsing and email.
Against this, Skuli Mogensen, CEO and founder of IM specialist software vendor, OZ, argued: “In life people are motivated either by fear or by greed, and this [the 3GSM announcement] was a decision based on fear.” Vendors like OZ believe that network operators were forced to act because companies like Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, Google and Skype have all announced initiatives to put their services – including IM software clients – onto handsets. If the mobile operators hadn’t moved to create their ‘own brand’ IM services then the fixed line IM leaders would have stolen the market. London based analyst, Rethink, believes that independently branded IM services “could take as much as 20 per cent of most operators’ profits away at a stroke.”
The 3GSM Barcelona decision has positive aspects, according to Mike Grenville, mobile consultant with SMS pressure group, 160characters. One big advantage will be interconnectivity. “At least one lesson seems to have been learnt from the success of SMS in that interoperability will be key,” he said. “Indeed it looks as though mobile will be stealing a march on the world of PC-based IM.” Muzaffer Akpinar, CEO with Turkcell, agrees. “We are a strong supporter of service interoperability among operators and IM interworking. In order to make mobile instant messaging as popular as SMS among mobile users, linking communities across networks is essential,” Akpinar maintained. Consequently Turkcell has been in IM interworking discussions with both fixed and mobile service providers and has already reached agreements with Vodafone and T-Mobile.
In terms of appropriate IM software clients, Tommy Volsen, vp for marketing with IM software vendor, Followap, claims that there are multiple options for implementing a Personal IM solution available to mobile operators. “Followap has an extensive list of handsets that are supported in a number of different ways – for example, by J2ME (Java) or Symbian download, preloaded IMPS/Wireless Village, WAP and SMS,” Volsen argued. “This flexibility enables our customers to deploy Personal IM to as many users as possible.” He added, “Having said that, we find that most of the traffic on Personal IM is generated by pre-loaded software and our Symbian client due to the enhanced level of service achieved with these implementations.” The reality is that with leading vendors like Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Motorola offering IM-ready handsets today, after 12 months operators will expect the problem of IM client software to disappear.
Successor
IM has been hailed as the obvious successor to SMS. At the 3GSM Press conference, Sanjiv Auha, CEO with FranceTelecom/Orange remarked that, “IM is the natural evolution of SMS.” According to Mike Grenville, “This suggests that the way in which different messaging types interact and compliment each other is not fully understood by operators. IM on mobile is not a replacement for SMS and will be an additional way for you to communicate with people close to you.” Grenville suggested that some conversations will transfer from SMS to mobile IM but the overall effect will be to increase the reliance on the mobile as the prime communications device. Also at the 3GSM conference, T-Mobile’s CEO, Rene Obermann, told attendees that he sees mobile IM as complementing – not cannibalising – SMS services. “Messaging triggers more messaging,” he argued.
Certainly, Personal IM offers benefits which SMS cannot. First of these is immediacy. Unlike SMS where some text messages sent on December 31st can take as long as 48 hours to arrive, with IM the message is delivered immediately. This becomes an even more powerful facility when combined with ‘presence’. In contrast to SMS, with IM the sender will not only know whether the intended recipient’s mobile phone is switched on but also if he or she is willing to accept messages. These capabilities mean that operators can target new market niches – particularly any organisation or business with a despatch requirement.
Back in February 2005, Turkcell became one of the first GSM operators to commercially launch a mobile operator-branded instant messaging service – Turkcell Messenger. The company claims that this service has been a great success since its launch especially reaching the targeted youth market. Crucially, Turkcell is expanding the scope of IM beyond pure messaging and using IM to sell their subscribers ‘infotainment’ style services. For example, it already offers a ‘weather buddy’ service. Additionally, IM enables a wide range of file types to be transferred. So operators will soon be able to enable videos and pictures captured with a cameraphone to be exchanged over their Personal IM systems. It’s unlikely, however, that Personal IM will cater for voice traffic, although – somewhat ironically – operators may open up Personal IM to 3G based videocalls.
Which protocol?
There is a certain degree of confusion as to how mobile operators will actually implement their Personal IM services. There was a suggestion in some quarters that the operators would need to migrate their backbone networks to an IP based model such as IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem). However, the guidance put out by the GSM Association on its web site (www.gsmworld.com/personal_im/) contradicts this. It says, “Operators don’t have to use SIP or IMS technology to provide Instant Messaging services. Several protocols are currently available for IM – IMPS (Instant Messaging and Presence Service), xMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol ) and SIP/SIMPLE (Session Initiation Protocol/ SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions) being the more obvious ones. Plus OMA (Open Mobile Alliance ) SIP/SIMPLE is currently fully compatible with IMS.” The GSMA’s advice goes onto suggest that, “Operators are free to choose any available protocol for IM deployment, but must be aware of the overhead cost of technical interworking between two or more different protocols.”
A good example of how an operator might implement Personal IM has been provided by Spain’s Telefonica Moviles. Under its ‘Movistar’ brand, Telefonica will offer its Spanish subscribers access to IM using client software provided by OZ, working alongside with Colibria’s IM and Presence server. Telefonica expects to have this service deployed by Q3 2006. OZ’s Mobile IMPS Server is tested and certified compliant to the Open Mobile Alliance’s specifications for IMPS – which encompass the earlier specifications for IM developed by Wireless Village (now part of OMA). Additionally, OZ’s server will enable operators to integrate IMPS services with other mobility services such as those provided by fixed line operators. Likewise, Colibria’s IM technology is not only IMPS compatible but can also accommodate legacy interfaces; gateway interworking; and other IM systems such as AIM, MSN and Yahoo.
As Mike Grenville commented, “It remains to be seen as to whether plugging in to a mobile version of IM will be popular enough with consumers. [The alternative is] adding a mobile option to their existing PC based IM service as already implemented by a number of industry players including Oz, Followap, Fastmobile, et al.” It may be possible to gauge what will happen with interconnexions from the IM trial which took place in France during 2005. All three French mobile networks – Bouygues Telecom, SFR and Orange – interconnected their IM services along with Vodafone and MSN. Significantly, France Telecom/Orange also gave IM access to PC users who were connected to its own broadband service – Wanadoo. To date, however, the only true mobile IM to fixed IM gateway in place is between Vodafone and Microsoft with its MSN Messenger service. At least that provides some indication of end user costings since MSN Messenger subscribers are being asked to pay around 0.15 Euros [15 cents] per message, although the messages are sold in bundles.
Costs
This raises the question of how much mobile subscribers will have to pay for IM. Of course, IM has been established in the USA for some time, and the end user pays between $3-5 per month, not including the cost of the GPRS connection (and without subsidies on the handset). Crucially, in some cases, the receiver of the IM message may be billed. At 3GSM Barcelona, all the operators were adamant that only the ‘calling party pays’. To date, in Western Europe, operators are trialing different packages. “We are currently in the early days of service development and the price to end users depends on each market,” Followap’s Volsen revealed. He estimated that, “There’s normally a 30 to 90 day free promotion period. After that it’s around 300 messages for 5 Euros, or a 600 messages package for 10 Euros.” Volsen believes that, typically, the cost of an IM message will be in the region of half of the price of an SMS message. “Different networks will adopt different models, but bundles of messages are gaining in popularity. Some operators will launch an ‘as-much-as-you-can-eat’ style package whereby the user is charged a set fee per day, per week or per month.”
Conclusion
Analyst group, Forrester, expects mobile IM to reach 44.68 billion messages a year by 2010. For the same period, it predicts that revenues from SMS, MMS, video messaging, IMPS, and mobile email will only grow by 10 per cent – to E21 billion by Q1 2011. Nonetheless, IMPS revenues will grow the fastest, accounting for 8 per cent of total mobile messaging revenues in 2010 – more than either mobile email or video messaging accounts for.
There are plenty of other reasons to believe that mobile IM will prosper. For example, on the global Internet one third of all users are already IM participants. Plus Strategy Analytics believes that by 2009, around seven per cent of all cellular phone users (equating to 189 million people) will utilise mobile IM.
“Mobile instant messaging will extend the benefits of instant messaging to a global community of over 2 billion mobile customers,” declared Stephen Bertrand, a partner with Bain’s global telecommunications practice. “More than half of mobile customers use SMS and many of these are candidates to adopt mobile IM.”