A Simple Plan
The Future of Mobile Phones:
Instant Messaging Meets SMS
November 3, 2006
Wandering around a recent mobile-phone expo in Singapore, I was overwhelmed by a sudden desire to collapse in a heap on the floor. It might have been the heavy load of conference papers and trade magazines I was carrying, but I think it was more the dull realization that for all the progress mobile phones have made, we still don't really understand what we're dealing with. Mobile phones, for all their whiz-bang-ness -- music, cameras, TV -- are at their core still a simple communication tool. It's why we love them. So why has so little changed?
Take SMS, also known as short messaging or texting, for example. At a similar mobile-phone expo six years ago, everyone was telling me that we'd soon be sending photos, video clips and multimedia messages via an enhanced version of SMS called MMS. In fact, SMS still dominates nonvoice mobile-phone revenues, while MMS has been a big disappointment.
The problem is that most providers in the industry don't seem to understand why SMS is so popular. It's not evidence that there's a big market for fancier services than SMS; SMS messages work for the very reason that they're not fancy. I can send an SMS message to more or less anyone anywhere in the world who has a mobile phone, and be pretty sure that they'll receive it and, because it's simple text, that they'll see it as I intended it to be seen.
But cellphone manufacturers need to make money, so they're selling us fancier gadgets with lots of bells and whistles, some of which we actually use. Mobile operators realize they have to try to make some of these extra services work (such as mobile TV), although they still aren't clear how they're actually going to make money out of them. On top of that, with more of us accessing the Web on our cellphones, they are terrified that they'll just become a commodity business like Internet service providers.
It isn't surprising, then, that SMS remains the big hope for the mobile industry. Now the idea isn't necessarily to build a more sophisticated service atop SMS, but to improve on the existing service. There are several competing visions of how to go about this, but they share a similar idea: Because we're kind of wedded to them, our phones could actually do a lot of things better than our computers.
So how about, for example, grafting SMS onto its similarly successful Internet cousin. Instant messaging -- sending short text messages in real time to buddies on the same network -- is hugely popular, and not just among teens. Quite a lot of businesses rely on it. Now a number of mobile-phone service developers are hoping to convince operators that mobile instant messaging, or MIM, is their savior.
It isn't a bad idea. One appeal of instant messaging is the idea of presence -- you can tell whether your buddy is online, busy in a meeting or eager to chat, before you actually send him a message. Imagine you could tell all your buddies that you were in a meeting, simply by switching your phone to silent -- your MIM icon would immediately indicate that you were unavailable. This is a feature included in software from United Kingdom-based Followap Inc., whose representatives are in Singapore trying to persuade Asian carriers to adopt its service. And it makes sense -- in a way. The idea of presence is useful when we're sitting at our computers, but might be more useful with our mobile phones, since they move around with us, allowing us to give all sorts of new information if we want ("bored, in the mall," "tired, still waiting at the luggage carousel," "framed, about to enter prison" or whatever).
Instant messaging and presence now are increasingly intertwined on the Internet with voice calls, through free or cheap services such as Skype, the Luxembourg-based Internet phone service owned by eBay Inc. of the U.S. But as mobile-phone networks get faster at handling data, and phones begin to include the capability to switch from the expensive cellular network to cheap or free wireless or WiFi networks, the three elements -- messaging, presence and voice calls -- are going to fuse further. So while Skype has been a little slow in making its service available on all mobile devices, other developers have sneaked in, including U.K.-based Barablu Ltd., which offers Skype-type software that allows free voice calls between WiFi-enabled-phone users, and cheap calls to traditional networks. Barablu Chief Executive Pascal Isbell is at the expo to convince operators to offer his service to their customers. "If they don't do it," he says, "others will."
Another option: Netherlands-based LogicaCMG PLC, whose products store and forward two-thirds of the world's SMS traffic, believes that to make money, carriers need to look at their customers differently. Already, says LogicaCMG's mobile-messaging marketing director Steven van Zanen, operators know each customer well, since they handle all those customers' traffic. Mining this traffic -- including usage patterns, location and contents of SMS messages -- could help them provide more tailored services to individual customers. "People want the killer application after SMS," he says. "But in fact it will be determined by the individual."
For sure, the mobile phone could be a lot smarter than it is -- not so much in terms of features, as in how it connects me to my friends and data. But having trampled these expo corridors of undelivered promises a few times before, I'm not jumping up and down quite yet.
手机──回归“沟通”之本
2006年11月03日19:59大 | 中 | 小
最近在新加坡手机展上，我突然很想蜷作一团昏倒在地。这或许是因为我拿的会议材料和行业杂志太沉了，不过我想更主要的原因是，我发现了一个令人沮丧的事实：尽管手机的发展日新月异，但我们对它却缺乏真正的了解。尽管手机可以用来播放音乐、照相甚至看电视，但从根本上它仍然只是简单的交流工具。这也正是我们对手机情有独锺的原因所在。那么为什么手机在交流方面的功能并没有多少改观呢？
以SMS(短信息)为例：在6年前一个类似的手机展会上所有人都在对我说，我们很快将通过SMS的升级版本MMS发送照片、视频短片和多媒体信息。而事实上到今天SMS仍然占据非语音手机服务收入的绝大部分，MMS的发展则让人大失所望。
问题在于，大多数供应商似乎并不理解为什么SMS如此受人青睐。这并不意味着比SMS更新奇的服务也能获得广阔市场；SMS之所以受欢迎恰恰是因为它平淡无奇。只要拥有手机，无论他身在何处，我都可以给他发送短信，而且确信他们可以收到，因为短信是简单的文本信息，他们看到的和我发送的内容别无二致。
但手机生产商必须不断挖掘新的利润点，于是他们便开始向我们兜售更新奇的、能够发出多种铃声的手机，有一部分我们也确实接受了下来。移动运营商也意识到他们必须让这些额外的服务（比如移动电视）变成现实，尽管他们并不是很清楚如何从这些服务中获利。除此以外，随着越来越多的人使用手机上网，它们开始担心自己可能会变得像互联网服务供应商一样获利空间有限。
因此，说SMS仍是手机行业的希望所在并不令人惊讶。如今的关键问题其实并不在于构建超出SMS、更为高端的服务，只要改进现有服务即可。手机行业对于如何改进SMS仍存争议，不过有一点已经成为共识：由于手机已和我们形影不 ，手机可以发挥比电脑更强大的作用。
所以何不借鉴一下互联网的经验。实时通讯取得了极大的成功，而且并不仅仅是在青少年的队伍中。许多企业也和实时通讯休戚相关。现在，大量的手机服务开发商希望能让运营商相信：移动实时通讯(MIM)是它们的救星。
这个主意不错。实时通讯的一个诱人之处在于：你在发送短信之前就可以知道你的朋友是否在线，他是在忙着开会，还是正想聊天。设想一下，只要你把手机设成静音，你的朋友们就知道你在开会──因为你的MIM图表会立即显示出你不方便接听电话。英国Followap Inc.推出的一款软件就具备这样的功能。该公司的代表也来到了新加坡，希望向亚洲运营商推广他们的产品。从某种角度来看这种服务的确有存在的价值。在我们使用电脑上网时显示在线状态就很有用，而用在手机上它的意义就更大了，因为我们随时随地都带着手机。如果我们愿意，我们可以随时通告各种最新信息（比如“我在购物中心，有些无聊”，“仍在等行李，精疲力尽”，或者“被陷害了，正等着进监狱”等等）。
通过Skype（Skype是eBay Inc.旗下、总部设在卢森堡的一家互联网电话服务供应商）等免费或廉价的网络通话服务，实时通讯、状态显示已经和语音电话密不可分。不过随着移动通讯网络处理数据的速度加快，手机开始具备从昂贵的无线网络转向廉价或免费WiFi网络的功能，短信、状态显示和语音电话这三项功能也将得到进一步融合。因此虽然Skype服务在向手机渗透时行动缓慢了一点，但其他开发商已经悄悄进入这一领域，比如英国的Barablu Ltd.。WiFi电话用户可通过该公司提供的类似Skype的软件实现免费通话，而传统网络用户也可获得廉价的电话服务。Barablu首席执行长帕斯卡?埃斯贝尔(Pascal Isbell)出席了新加坡展会，向多家运营商展示了他们的服务。他说，“如果这些运营商不开展这项业务，也自然有其他运营商做的。”
运营商还有一个选择：荷兰LogicaCMG PLC的产品能存储并转发全球三分之二的SMS流量，该公司深信，运营商想要获取利润，就必须区别对待自己的客户。LogicaCMG的移动短信营销负责人史蒂芬?赞恩(Steven van Zanen)表示，因为运营商需要处理所有客户的短信，所以他们应该对每位客户都了如指掌。挖掘其中的特点──包括使用习惯和SMS内容等──可以帮助他们针对不同的消费者量身定制服务。
的确，手机还可以变得比现在更加机智灵活──这不仅仅体现在它拥有的各种功能上，更重要的是它如何实现和朋友、数据间的沟通交流。不过在以往的展会上，有许多承诺并未最终成为现实，所以这次我也实在很难真正兴奋起来。
Jeremy Wagstaff
