The vision of inter-operator mobile instant messaging may be a story for 2009, but in 2008 it was all about the IM communities getting mobilised, chat, and mobilising updates to social networks. Oh, and Nokia got involved too
Exactly what Mobile IM services are up and running with mobile operators, asked Tony Dennis in our September issue? It was a decent question to ask, given that the year had seen a plethora of service announcements across Europe – most of them about mobilising online IM communities.
In February the major IM server and handset vendor software vendors were talking of context-aware messaging. And the GSMA was talking about its PIM Initiative.
But we wondered if the operators were listening.
March: "Yet in many countries, as Mobile Europe readers will know, mobile operators have side-lined their home grown "on-network" instant messaging applications, preferring instead to support existing offerings from Internet players such as Microsoft and Yahoo.
"One of the few exceptions to this is Italian operator TIM, which launched Alice Messenger 18 months ago and is now seeing the service gain some traction.
"Alessio Derme, senior product manager, marketing consumer, at TIM, told Mobile Europe last month that his company remained committed to the GSMA PIM initiative, and that TIM wished other operators were too.
"The key benefit of PIM, as Derme sees it, is that it will bring interoperability between operators.
"We can't give our users an interoperable interconnection with other networks," said Derme. "It's something that we would like to change."
"Turkcell's ceo of value added services, Cenk Serder, was making the point that in Turkey, where there are millions of Windows Live Messenger users, there is little point in trying to start up a specific, mobile operator focused service.
"We're the pioneer of IM, and actually started with a PIM based approach back in early 2006, but we changed horses at the end of 2007, and the reason is that it brings more internet services into play." Serdar said. "It's hard to ride against the tide, and MSN usage in Turkey is the third largest in the world, with 23 million accounts. MSN is so widespread that it was very hard to start something else and that's what we saw over the last two years." And Turkcell is not alone in Turkey in targeting those 23 million MSN/ Windows Live users with a gateway product.
September: The debate has moved on, but only by a little.
"Guy Reiffer, product marketing director with Colibria, makes a similar distinction. "Currently there are two options available for mobile operators, Mobilised Internet IM Gateway services and operator ‘own brand' MIM services," he argues. "With Mobilised Internet IM Gateway services, operators are able to provide subscribers with complete access to an existing Internet IM service, such as Windows Live Messenger, Google Talk or ICQ. This option enables the operator to leverage the brand awareness of a chosen Internet IM brand. However, it does mean that the operator is potentially restricted by certain business models and branding factors."
According to Scott Stonham, vp for product marketing with IM specialist, Miyowa, the prominent ISP-based IM service appears to vary markedly depending upon geography. Microsoft – with its variations of Windows Live Messenger – appears to dominate in Western Europe, whereas in Eastern Europe ICQ is most prominent. Yahoo! holds market leadership position in Asia, whereas in Western Europe it is running a close second. Stonham puts these differences down to which brand has achieved the best 'mind share' amongst the existing fixed line community of IM users.
There's one obvious solution to this dilemma. At OZ Communications, Michel Besner, a senior vp of marketing points out that, "OZ has successfully deployed Windows Live, Yahoo Messenger, AIM and ICQ services, all of which can be accessed and used simultaneously from inside a single client application." By contrast, Miyowa's Stonham revealed significant part of the specification process which occurs when mobile operators come to his company for IM client software. He maintains that the majority of operators start off by asking for one client which can handle all of the major IM services. "After time – for a variety of political commercial and technical reasons – this requirement usually dwindles down to a request for just one IM service to be covered – on a toe in the water basis," Stonham explained."
By the end of the year, with Nokia now owning OZ, and pouring some of its technology into an enhanced Messaging proposition, the concept of native, presence-based messaging from a unified client was a little, if only a little, closer.
December: Nokia is integrating PC-based webmail services within Ovi with Nokia Messaging for mobile by launching Nokia messaging along with Mail on Ovi. Nokia Messaging mobilises consumer email services for users of most Nokia phones and webmail services, the company says. But IM is not set to be enabled until the second half of 2009.
Interestingly, Nokia also hopes to have the service supported by operators so that data plans will include Nokia Messaging – without the operators making any additional service charges for mobile email or IM access
For some operators, this will not be attractive, as it risks driving users away from the operators' "own" communities. But for others the attraction will be the Nokia Messaging, if it works as easily as Nokia is saying, will drive consumer adoption of data tariffs.