July 1, 2004
Not so happy with the snaps
It has been two years since picture messaging was launched in the UK but the medium has yet to take off with the masses. Sean Dodson for The Guardian, looks at the reasons for the slow growth.
The major reasons for barrier to a mass uptake in MMS? Interoperability - you still can't always send an MMS from one phone operator to another - and it's costly. People basically use their camera phone to snap and store pictures temporarily, using them as screensavers or transferring the pictures to their computer using Bluetooth or infrared.
"On Monday, the The Mobile Data Association released the first industry-wide assessment of picture messaging. It reported that more than 11 million MMS active devices - nearly a quarter of all mobiles in the UK - have been registered for picture messaging on the four major UK networks (O2, Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone). A quarter of all mobile users have sent at least one picture message in the past three months."
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