re: The MMS Infra Race
Nokia is reasserting itself as an MMS force just when it seemed to be lagging behind. ...
Undecided operators will not be ignoring the early success of Ericsson, CMG and Nokia, and for some of the other suppliers the writing may well be on the wall. ...
>> Crunch Time
Trefor Moss
Mobile Communications International
Issue 6, 01 June 2002
As operators begin to roll out their commercial MMS offerings, some infrastructure suppliers will be fearing that they have missed the boat.
Had you been betting on the likely winners in the race to supply MMS infrastructure, you might well have regarded CMG and Logica as the hot favourites to secure much of the market based on their SMS pedigree.
Between them they command 70 per cent of the SMS business. But hindsight shows that the smart money would have gone on Ericsson, which last month underlined its lead in the sector by announcing a group-wide order from T-Mobile to complement an earlier deal to supply nine Vodafone networks.
Of the SMS market leaders, CMG was sounding upbeat as its AGM was assured that revenue potential from MMS remained promising, thanks to the 12 MMS contracts already in the bag. Of these, the significant business has been done with Hutchison to cover networks in five countries, and with Telia to cover networks in four.
But for Logica the MMS rewards are proving elusive. Logica cut 700 jobs and issued a profits warning in May amid suggestions that it would do well to offload its messaging business altogether and raise around $400 million through the sale. A spokesman denied this, although Dario Betti, co-author of Ovum's recent Multimedia Strategies for Mobile Messaging report, suggests: "It would make sense. The [messaging] business will be very tough to grow." Logica recently inked a supply agreement with Austrian operator Mobilkom and has signed deals to supply two other, as yet unnamed, operators with MMS equipment so far. Indeed, having trialled its MMS systems with almost 30 others, Logica can still hope to claw back some of Ericsson and CMG's lead. That said, Betti observes that "trials in themselves are not the best way of judging whether they'll actually close a deal."
Meanwhile, messaging specialist Tecnomen announced in May its first firm order for MMS infrastructure and services from an unspecified Nordic operator.
Other business has gone the way of Comverse, which signed up Bouygues and KT Icom, Korea Telecom's 3G arm. As Betti points out, MMS vendors with little contractual success to date should not give up just yet. There is still a whole lot of MMS business up for grabs.
And this was just what Nokia demonstrated in early June with the announcement of two important MMS contract wins: one from TIM in Italy, and another from Telefonica Moviles, this time for group-wide supply. The order from TIM raises the strong possibility of subsequent business with its other networks, and, given the questions that persist over interoperability between different vendors' MMS solutions, TIM can reasonably be expected to send more business Nokia's way. These multi-national operators are, of course, the all-important customers in today's infrastructure market.
The bad news for firms such as Logica, Comverse and Openwave which are struggling to assert themselves in the MMS market is that there aren't many of these multi-network contracts left. Orange is probably the pick of those yet to put pen to paper.
Nokia is reasserting itself as an MMS force just when it seemed to be lagging behind. Although less significant than its European gains, Nokia's Asian MMS presence also backs this up. Having delivered MMS infrastructure to Hong Kong CSL, Nokia went on last month to demonstrate the viability of MMS across different GPRS networks, in this case those of CSL and China Mobile.
European operators, meanwhile, were starting to launch introductory MMS services, even though there was only one MMS-compliant handset on the market - Sony Ericsson's T68i. Swisscom's service became available in early June and will be free until the end of September, after which charges will be volume-based. A 10kB message will cost about $0.50. In the UK, T-Mobile unveiled a subscription-based service that will cost £20 a month.
Of the other operators that have launched to date, Vodafone's German D2 network is to charge €0.39 for an MMS of up to 30kB, while its Portuguese business Telecel is to charge €0.45 for the same volume of data; TMN's service, also in Portugal, is free until the end of October after which it, too, will charge €0.45 per message; Telenor in Norway will charge a high-looking flat fee of €1.29 (it has been suggested that this is intended to keep usage to manageable levels); and Westel in Hungary has adopted a three-tier, volume-based pricing plan of €0.30 for under 10kB, €0.65 for 10-30kB, and €1.30 for over 30kB.
These pricing regimes are, of course, purely exploratory and largely academic given the tiny volumes of MMS traffic that will be generated over the first few months. The range and price of MMS-enabled handsets will remain too prohibitive for meaningful take-up in the short-term.
With mass-market MMS still perhaps a few years away, it is unsurprising that many operators have yet to select their infrastructure suppliers.
But undecided operators will not be ignoring the early success of Ericsson, CMG and Nokia, and for some of the other suppliers the writing may well be on the wall. <<
- Eric - |
