iSendMMS release schedule

Our tech team is now working hard to fix bugs in iSendMMS that was published on AppStore on Thursday last week, allowing Swedes to send MMS from their iPhone.

Here is our current release schedule:

v1.0.1: (Submitted to Apple for approval)
BUG DESCRIPTION: The "Send" button is not disabled when the MMS is sent. If the user hits "Send" again, multiple MMS may be sent. (However these are already filtered on server side, so MMS won't be published/charged more than once)
BUG RESOLVED: When pressing "Send" button the UI now disables the button after submitting, to avoid multiple submits being sent.

BUG DESCRIPTION: Status indication not always displayed to user after sending MMS.
BUG RESOLVED: The user is now informed in the status field if the message was sent OK or not. If a MMS fails for any reason, the user can resubmit it. This also helps partly to cure the EDGE sending failure problem fixed in next release, since now the user get the failure notification and can try a resubmit.

BUG DESCRIPTION: Screen flickers while showing progress bar.
BUG RESOLVED: This is now resolved

v1.0.2: (Under development)
BUG DESCRIPTION: EDGE phones sometimes rejecting MMSs.
BUG RESOLVED: Under development...

BUG DESCRIPTION: Bug when replacing an existing image while composing MMS.
BUG RESOLVED: Bug fixed.

BUG DESCRIPTION: Some special characters in text can cause problems sending MMS.
BUG RESOLVED: Under development...

BUG DESCRIPTION: Default text remains in text/subject field if not edited.
BUG RESOLVED: Bug fixed.

On the list of features to be added in future releases:
NEW FEATURE: MMS "Sent" box
NEW FEATURE: Multiple receiptients
NEW FEATURE: SMIL support
... and more

MMS for iPhone available for Swedish users

We are glad to mention to you that our iPhone app for sending MMS is now available in the Apple App Store. So far it only works in Sweden and more specifically it works for users with a Telia SIM card.

Our ambition is to make this service available in more countries and for more operators as quickly as possible. We also want to implement the functionality of receiving MMS in iPhone + some other cool features into the app.

Supporting more operators + more countries
In order to support more operators we are willing to strike deals with operators and quickly launch the MMS for iPhone app. If you know some operators who needs this service or you are working for an operator yourself please contact us (sales AT mobispine.com) and we will help you out.

Support for incoming MMS in iPhones
To receive MMS in the iPhone seamlessly we need the mobile operator to do some configuration on their side and it would also make lots of sense to use the Apple notification API when released. Before that API comes we can always notify the users with SMS to start with.

I know our techies work right now on fixing some bugs/issues that have been reported by kind early adopters. Here are the bugs/issues we have noticed so far:

• Some users reckoned that multiple MMS were delivered to a user when sending one MMS. This bug IS FIXED NOW as I write this blog post. Thx @marko_salonen
• Only one receiver for the MMS can be selected, not multiple.
• Sometimes when EDGE connection is used, an error message is displayed and the MMS is not sent.
• (Workaround - hit Send again)
• One user reported some problems registering the app up-front but it worked for him second time.
• Sometimes when sending MMS, the toolbar flickers (cosmetical bug)

Thx a lot for this initial feedback! We just want to let you know that we are onto it and we will fix the above bugs straight away. Any other feedback is well appreciated (both positive and negative feedback of course)

Thx!

Mobispine: Breathing new life into MMS

This is a summary of an article published on Acision's website about the Mobispine desktop messaging services. For full article click here.

Mobispine is challenging many of the preconceptions about MMS messaging- and building a powerful business for mobile operators.

Two things that you might assume about MMS are that it's always sent from a phone and that it's strictly person to person. That's two things you've got wrong. Mobispine provides tools to allow both SMS and MMS messages to be sent from a PC to one or multiple users.

The Desktop Messaging system consists of both PC client software and a server architecture which sits alongside the network's existing infrastructure.

Why PC-to-phone?

For the user it's the missing link between phone and PC messaging. For the operator it's a great way to drive up the usage of MMS.

One of the long-standing problems with MMS has been the generation of content. Of course it's possible: phones have cameras and some allow a bit of editing; but it's nothing like as flexible as a PC. Research has shown that if rich content isn't sent within 50 seconds of generation, it tends not to be sent at all.
If you want to Photoshop a third eye into your colleague's forehead, it's a job for a PC. What's more a PC has the whole internet-worth of content which can be pasted into an MMS and sent.

In keeping with this view of being able to send what used to be mobile messages from your computer, Mobispine offers huge flexibility in how you can do it from the computer. There is of course a dedicated client, but there is also the option to send messages from inside both your web browser and Outlook. For Vista and Mac users there is a desktop widget. It supports contacts lists from both Outlook and Vista.

Integration with other applications plays to the 50 second rule. Get an email or find something on a web page and well within the 50 seconds you can have it sent onwards to a phone. You can ask for replies to be sent to your phone or directly back to your email. Mobispine desktop messaging acts as a bridge between viral jokes in email and by SMS; and "viral" of course has marketing applications as well as fun ones.

Mobispine in action

A Swedish company, Mobispine has been providing desktop messaging since 2000. It has 25 operators using the platform including TeliaSonera, O2 and Vodafone. One small operator, a Norwegian MVNO, has just 100 employees. The smallest networks have 100,000 subscribers and the biggest has 20 million subscribers. It's very scalable; and that makes it very saleable.

It's easy for an operator to install Desktop messaging on the server side (the server does smart things before sending the message to the SMSC/MMSC) and it's a natural add-on for the operator's existing SMSC/MMSC. And for the operator it's profitable. Typically, operators see an ARPU lift of $3/$4 for the typical user; the equivalent to sending an additional 50 SMS per month.

About the Author

Simon Rockman is Head of Requirements and Applications at Sony Ericsson. This means he looks at what people and networks want, and tries to match them up. Previously he was Creative Experience Director at Motorola, and founder of What Mobile magazine. His particular areas of interest are consumer trends, user interface and gaming.

App store secrets

Just saw a very good presentation from a company called Pinchmedia about iPhone applications that I wanted to share with you. I think most mobile developers have seen similar experiences even though not that structured as in this presentation.

iPhone AppStore Secrets - Pinch Media

View more presentations from pinchmedia. (tags: pinch smartphone)

Our products & what we are up to now!

Hey there!

We have the following products available for mobile operators and other players in the mobile/internet industry
- Desktop messaging including outlook plugins, toolbars, widgets/gadgets etc, web-based messaging
- iMMS, MMS for iPhone solutions
- MyScoop Mediabox, online photo & video albums
- RSS-reader with mobile content directory

Our great tech team is currently very busy doing...
- some large customer deployments of desktop messaging - new ones & upgrades of existing systems
- some software development projects (GPS apps, synch/backup solutions..)
- improvement of the MyScoop Mediabox solution - soon available for beta testing...
- Final touch of Mac Widget (let us know if you'd like to beta test it)

What is Next?
- Simplified download procedure for desktop messaging -> more happy users
- Public launch of Mac Widget for Desktop Messaging
- Mediabox demo system up and running for international users with more and more functionality available
- Desktop Messaging available in more countries

Any other ideas of what is important for making mobile operators and mobile users happy in our field?

Happy Valentine all!

2009: Mobile Messaging Predictions

I ran into some pretty interesting mobile messaging predictions written by Chris Lennartz from Mobile Messaging 2.0. I have taken the freedom to publish some of the most exciting content from his predictions here on our Mobispine blog.

- Mobile messaging to defy economic downturn - Mobile messaging will continue to grow despite the current downturn in the global economy. As mobile data revenues increase and voice revenues are under pressure, mobile messaging will be seen as the lifeline to the mobile industry, as especially mobile youth regards it as cheap, fast, private, easy and silent. It will fuel the growth in mobile data services and will in turn steer mobile operators, device OEMs and content providers through the tricky times ahead.

Our predictions support recent figures from M:Metrics which state that the number of people using SMS has increased 3.3% year on year across mature markets like the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. This supports recent figures from ABI research which state that revenues from mobile messaging will grow from $127 billion in 2008 to $212 billion by 2013.

- Less developed regions to fuel peaks in SMS activity - Most new subscribers to mobile services will come from less economically developed and newly industrialised regions, many of whom have a low disposable income. Most of the phones shipped to these markets have little more than voice and text capabilities so the growth potential for SMS in these markets will be significant. According to ABI the number of messaging users will grow with a rate of over 10% per year in countries in Asia, South America and Africa

- China fuels MMS uptake - The use of MMS will continue to grow especially in China where MMS is booming. Its growth will be helped by ever improving handsets and the demand for user generated content, blogging, social networking and mobile marketing. Juniper Research predicts revenues from MMS to top $16 billion in 2009. However, for this to happen mobile operators must ensure that their infrastructure and marketing is equipped to target MMS. The application-to-person MMS traffic in China makes up for 70% of all MMS traffic (source: ZTE)

- Personalisation comes of age - In the Western world, we expect much of the growth in mobile messaging to come from personalised services, as in the Fast Moving Consumer Good market that telecoms has become, differentiating on user experience is key. Customers will demand more from their operators in terms of ease of use, convenience, status, fashion, security, safety, privacy and control, so differentiating the services an operator can offer through added features such as productivity and security-based SMS applications, like out-of-office, auto-forward, storage/back-up capabilities and messaging firewalls will be key to not only enhancing the mobile experience but also increasing messaging ARPU and offsetting generic price decline on SMS and MMS.

- Mobile internet overtakes PC based internet use - The use of the mobile internet will increase significantly by the end of 2009. According to IBM more than 50 per cent of consumers would substitute their PC based internet connection for their mobile. As the majority of new phones come with internet access as standard we predict that more people will access the internet from their mobile than their PC by the end of 2009. According to T-Mobile Germany, browsing on iPhones was 30 times more than on other handsets, and at Vodafone Germany 45% of data ARPU already is mobile internet, due to partnerships with Google, YouTube and MySpace and using widgets.

- The digital youth drives changes in communication - The rise of social networks will continue and this will impact upon mobile messaging traffic as more and more people use their mobile phones to update their profiles remotely and blog on the move. It will be interesting to see what the behaviour of the digital youth will lead to as they have proven that they prefer social networking, blogging and text messaging over voice. Will this lead to the end of the voicemail as we know it? According to Nielsen Mobile, the 13-17 age group in the US sends around 1800 SMS per month, that is 60 SMS per day…

What do you think? Do you agree? Or not?

Merry christmas & Happy New Year!

Year 2008 has been very interesting from Mobispine side. Somehow we can say we have become a real company with real customers and real revenue as well! Some positive takeways from this year is:
- increased the number of customers, currently +25 mobile operators as customers
- Three companies have been acquired and merged into Mobispine
- No of employees is now around 25 (a year ago we might have been 15..)
- Revenue goes up and shall go up even more for 2009 of course

In my opinion this is great progress from a company such as Mobispine with growth anbitions.

We don't know exactly what is waiting for us in 2009 when people talk about financial crisis, economic downturn etc. The only thing I know personally is that everything is possible. If you want something really bad you will most probably get it. The sky is the limit and with good products and good team you can always reach customers and do deals. It is just a question of number of calls, meetings, proposals etc.. So my guts feeling is that we will do even much better next year if we continue to work as hard as we are doing now (or even harder of course!)

I want to thanks all the fantastic employees we have in Sweden, Romania and Ukraine! We are very delighted that you want to work with us and build this company. We also want to thank all our fantastic customers. Without You we would not be here, we would not even be alive as a company. I also want to say thanks to all our shareholders who believe in us and have had the patience so far.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

/ Joakim

PS Thanks Andrei for the picture!

Mobispine a company presentation

We want to share with you the basic concept of Mobispine such as:
- Who we are
- What we do
- Who we sell our stuff to
- Our business model

Enjoy the reading and let us know if you have some ideas.

MMS for iPhone, Q & A's

No comment

First native MMS app for iPhone under development

As you know, Mobispine is always working on innovative ways to respond
to market demands. We noticed there was a lack of an MMS on iPhone and
spotted an opportunity to test our wits. I'm happy to say that once
again, the Mobispine team came up trumps!

We're currently the only company ready to sell MMS on iPhone to global operators -- who will then offer the service to end-users. The service is integrated into operators environment with MMSC, provisioning and is to be approved by the App store guys of course.

Right now, we're offering the MMS on iPhone service to its many global operators who have the rights to sell iPhones in their markets. We're excited about the chance to enable MMS for iPhone users.


We're confident that operators will find the service easy to use and
profitable with an opportunity to expand messaging usage, improve subscriber retention and hopefully increase revenue. The service will also increase customer loyalty and recognition as the brand is displayed on the user's phone. The application is white-labelled and will be branded for each operator and distributed via the App store.

We're sure that iPhone users are awaiting this service with bated
breath! We look forward to delivering innovative technologies that
differentiate operators and ultimately satisfy iPhone user's demands
for expanded features.

As always, thanks for your support and let us know what you think.