Last week, Sony Ericsson participated with a speaker and demos at an Ericsson Mobility World MMS Developer Day in Stockholm, Sweden. The event was arranged for the Nordic and Baltic countries, and attended by some 60-70 interested developers from Sweden, Denmark, Finland, England, the US, and… oh yes, there were even a couple of developers that had been driving for 14 hours from St Petersburg in order to attend this conference. Speakers presented MMS from marketing, technical, operator, handset and billing perspectives.

Robert Arcon, the center manager, and Jorgen Odgaard, responsible for Ericsson Mobility World's global Open Community program, kicked off the day by explaining how Ericsson Mobility World works with operators and developers, and how they also can assist developers with end-to-end testing services.

Ericsson Marketing Manager, Karin Bjork, discussed trends within MMS, presenting a business outlook on the global market situation of MMS, 3G and beyond. Bjork explained that a successful MMS launch is dependent on starting in the right place – with the end users' needs. Other key areas that must be addressed include handsets, pricing, interoperability, content and applications, and ease of use.

Magnus Ahlberg, Head of Business Sales at Swedish operator 3, spoke next about the challenges they have faced when entering the Swedish market and introducing MMS. 3 launched its services in June 2003, and is currently competing on the Swedish market with its voice call pricing.

Developers also got a walk-through from Ericsson's Lori Ann Robertson of the Ericsson MMS Software Development Kit (SDK).

  
Abbas Sumar speaking about MMS in Sony Ericsson mobile phones.

Abbas Sumar, Tools Manager of Sony Ericsson Developer World, gave a technical overview of MMS features in Sony Ericsson mobile phones, coming features, and discussed how device features and Digital Rights Management (DRM) will affect MMS application design and also encourage content developers and media industry to provide high quality content.

MMS has become very popular as a means to share personal experiences with others through picture messaging. However, MMS can also be used to push new applications and content such as games, ringtones and video clips to the consumer. Having the handset automatically recognize the pushed content type enables the content to be stored in appropriate folders/menus on the phone, thereby providing a simplified end-user experience for content and applications download.

A developer in the audience asked about the trends in DRM. Forward Lock is now supported in Sony Ericsson phones. In the near future, we will see Combined Delivery and Super Distribution mechanisms in place, and Abbas anticipated that we will then begin seeing the effects of viral marketing.

Fredrik Ruben from Ericsson gave a presentation about the Internet Payment eXchange (IPX), a payment mediator and service with micro-payment capabilities (in this particular case signifying charging for content costing less than €5), offered by Ericsson to content providers as an alternative way for them to charge users without having to establish an own relationship with each operator.

In the breaks, conference attendees could view demos of the Sony Ericsson T230, T610, T630, Z600, P800 and P900, as well as test drive the CAR-100 Bluetooth car using both T630 and P900 Bluetooth applications (read the separate article about controlling the Bluetooth car from your P900).

MMS related tools
Adobe GoLive is a powerful tool for professional developers. The Adobe GoLive tool supports MMS authoring and makes it easy to develop content for Sony Ericsson phones.

The free Sony Ericsson MMS Preview Player allows developers to easily preview MMS content and download it to Sony Ericsson phones. The Preview Player works well as a browser in Adobe GoLive, and can be downloaded for free from our developer web portal (download the MMS Preview Player here).

 The mass-market MMS Home Studio can be used for PC-based multimedia "production" by the end-user, and can be downloaded for free on Sony Ericsson's Fun & Downloads site.

For more information:

• Download the MMS presentation from Sony Ericsson>>
• Messaging Docs & Tools on Sony Ericsson Developer World>>
• MMS Docs and Tools on Ericsson Mobility World>>
• Read more about Ericsson Internet Payment eXchange (IPX)>>