• Cellular Technology That Never Caught On

    Cellular Technology That Never Caught On

    Rohan Naravane, Jul 02, 2010 1226 hrs IST

    We find out why these technologies failed

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When cellphones were invented in the 70's, they were meant to extend the main function of a land line phone (i.e. making calls) with the freedom from wires. Features like SMS, calendar, WAP etc. were added on later. Out of these new add-ons, some became very popular with the masses. Short messages have become a favored mode of communication when you just want to convey the message quick without disturbing the receiver. GPRS has opened doors for true internet to be accessible from your phone.
 
But out of many such successful features, there are a few that didn't really appeal to many cellphone users around the world. So what were the reasons for the failure of these features? We tried to find out.
 
MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service)
 
It's not like MMS was a complete failure. The word 'MMS' was probably popularized in India after the media made a big story about a certain obscene video circulated by a student of a Delhi-based school many years back. MMS was hyped to surpass its predecessor (SMS), as it had the ability to send audio, photo and video along with text, all wrapped in a single message. I still remember an ad promoting MMS in a newspaper many years back. It showed a man at the fish market taking a snap of the day's fresh catch and then sending it via MMS to his wife for her approval. Sounds quite useful, doesn't it?




No, this is not the "fresh catch" ad I was referring to

 
So why didn't it surpass its little brother, the Short Messaging Service (SMS)? Firstly, back then not everybody had phones with color displays and cameras. Even if they did, not everybody activated GPRS on their phones, which was necessary to receive an MMS. Also, MMS was (in India it still is) five times as expensive as sending a single SMS.
 
Today, things are different though. Even a 4000 rupee phone has MMS capability. But the limitations of the MMS protocol in today's world don't make the service feasible. Photos taken from even a lowly 2 megapixel camera are compressed further before sending. In this day and age, the paltry maximum size of roughly 300kb works against it. You can rather e-mail an attachment straight from your phone. E-mail has a larger, rather workable max size restriction than MMS. People nowadays also prefer to directly upload photos and videos to social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter from the phone. I think that was the final nail in the coffin for MMS -- you won't be missed, old friend!
 

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Discussion Board
(8) Comments
Anuj
,delhi, on Jul 20, 2010 07:07 AM
@techtree PTT dead agreed, but i guess kyocera made a lot of PTT cellphones even in 2002-2003, video calling never took off in US cuz only provider was AT&T and T-Mobile with bandwidth constraints, i heard it is used a lot in Europe. Well i myself use Stereo bluetooth its so damn convenient and its very famous with all gymoholics not in india cuz of price and good brands with good designs like jaybird, MMS same reason the price in India Rs 5 for a message is a big deal, when i can send an email for half the price over Wi-fi. My request is to stop copying, modifying and pasting articles u r owned by UTV now!!
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Anony
,Agra, on Jul 15, 2010 08:12 PM
PTT is dead !!! next to Motorola i1 Push to Talk Smartphone Ad. Actually PTT is still alive in US and Europe and flourishing all most all brands have PTT offered on the phone. Nokia On the other hand has no share in Leading market of US and has no hopes of making it to US market due to different marketing strategy or to say "due operator support to Nokia" . Nokia kill it in house
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Anuj
,delhi, on Jul 20, 2010 07:02 AM
dude PTT killed sprint the reason for Sprint's downfall was investing too much in PTT
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Peter MacCabe
,Nottingham, on Jul 14, 2010 12:24 AM
There were several features features which could have been big on mobiles besides those already mentioned. One was Cell Broadcast which promised much such as traffic info and news flashes etc but never really got going, another was Line 2 ignored by everybody apart from Orange and another was cheap calls when in a given post code Vodafone had it on a tarriff called "MetroDigital" and one2one (now T-Mobile) had an "Inside Option", this again was poorly marketed and interest wilted . Both parties allowed it to quietly expire. Shame-I had high hopes for all.
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anon
,pune, on Jul 06, 2010 02:47 PM
buddy.. PTT is WIDELY POPULAR ... only not in india; but not because the operators dont want it; it's because it is disallowed by TRAI for 'security' reasons
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Sudip
,Bangalore, on Jul 03, 2010 09:15 AM
One more feature which I think never really caught up was the facility to call a person from your phonebook by just uttering his/her name...I remember there was this ad with tabu about this feature where at the end she exclaims 'Oh God' and the phone shows 'Calling God' or something like that
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sachin
,goa, on Jul 04, 2010 08:41 AM
it was a samsung phone add for voice dialing feature i remember!!
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Alberto
,Nowhere, on Jul 03, 2010 12:18 AM
hehee....funny MMS ad man
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