December 13, 2004
Numbers of people not taking and sending pictures, audio and video is growing
There is no doubt that mobile phones sporting cameras and colour screens are hugely popular.
More than 167 million handsets were sold between July and September 2004, a period that, according to Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi is "seldom strong".
But although consumers have mobiles that can take and send snaps, sounds and video clips few, so far, are taking the chance to do so, reports the BBC.
"In fact, the numbers of people not taking and sending pictures, audio and video is growing.
Figures gathered by Continental Research shows that 36% of British camera phone users have never sent a multimedia message (MMS), up from 7% in 2003.
This is despite the fact that, during the same period, the numbers of camera phones in the UK more than doubled to 7.5 million.
Research bears out the suspicion that people are not sending multimedia messages because they do not know how to.
This has led to operators finding other technologies, particularly one known as Wap-push, to get multimedia to their customers.
Israeli technology firm Celltic has found a way to broadcast data across phone networks in a way that does not overwhelm existing bandwidth.
One of the first firms to use the Celltick service is Hutch India, the largest mobile firm in the country. The broadcast system gets multimedia to customers via a rolling menu far faster than would be possible with other systems.
While not multimedia messaging, such a system gets people used to seeing their phones as a device that can handle all different types of content.
As a result 40% of the subscribers to the Hutch Alive, which uses Celltick's broadcast technology, regularly click for more pictures, sounds and images from the operator."
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