VNU / Personal Computer World are running a story on In-Stat’s recent survey which found that less than a third of cameraphone owners share picture messages with friends.
Full article: Here
Now this survey blames poor picture quality, apparent slow network performance and the difficulty of actually sending pictures.
These are issues. However it’s the cash that’s holding it back. None of my friends — and I’m talking the non-technical guys and girls who are simply mobile phone users — send MMS messages. It’s only me. Let’s be clear: They take tons of pictures on their phones, but they share them by physically handing the phone to their friend and showing them the picture.
They don’t send.
Why?
Because on many price plans it’s around 50 pence a message.
Don’t be ridiculous! Yes the image is, on many phones, still a shitty resolution, however I’m quite happy to send it to my friend if it’ll raise a smile. BUT NOT at GBP £0.50 per shitty picture. It’s not difficult to do — the handset manufacturers have made it pretty simple for your average mobile user to send pictures nowadays. (I’m thinking Sony Ericsson and their quick-send function).
There’s a whole UK mobile generation now who perceive MMS as far too expensive to actually use regularly. What a shame. If only they’d introduced it at say GBP£0.15 per message. Even £0.25 is, I think, too expensive.
It’s a huge disappointment to me. A HUGE disappointment.
Just checked Vodafone UK’s 3g price plan:
Text message: 12p
Picture message: 36p
Video message: 60p
Ridiculous.
I haven’t receive an MMS in the last month. Isn’t that sad? Tons of texts flying in all the time from friends. But no MMS.
Interesting, and in the main I’d agree that it’s price which is a major factor in determining whether someone will send mms…
But the central reason, that i believe both intuitively and from experience, is that MMS is a ONE WAY COMMUNICATION EXPERIENCE… Oops, sorry, didnt mean to shout 😀
But seriously, aside from a girl or boyfriend blowing you a kiss or naughtier, what possible reason would you have to respond to an mms with an mms? And from the senders pov, if you receive nothing back, why send again?
The answer, of course, is that prices need to drop (massively) and people need to be educated that getting your phones content online and into a moblog site is the best, fastest, and most effective way to save and share the content generated on your phone.
An explosion in the use of moblogging would definitely get things moving, wouldn’t it?
I’d definitely agree with Alfie on this. Personally I usually get an sms reply from friends if I send them a mms, and then an sms conversation ensues, but unless it’s a case of “I’m here (photo), show me a photo of where you are” no one ever replies via mms (and I’ve never had that kind of conversation!).
I think a dramatic price drop would definitely make a big difference, I’d certainly send a lot more mms messages even if I didn’t get many replies!
I seriously wonder what the network operators are missing, James! Yes dropping the price will cut into profits, but surely, you want *more* people to use the technology? Perhaps it’s just too damn expensive for them to comprehend.