Strategic Innovation

There is a pretty cool description of the History of MMS and the challenges it faced on the Wikipedia.

Essentially, the “Bells” built standards for Mobile Messaging, and our Wikipedia explores some of the technical failures of it. In simple terms chief of the technical problems include:

• In-compatible Handsets or Poor Configurations
• In-efficient transfers, especially when sending to lists

The scale of the poor performance was explained by Sourabh & Anoj from MicroAppli explained to at our previous E-27. On the 10 MMS that they were sending to test it’s dependability, they found that 8 would not reach the destination because of either handset issues, configuration issues or carrier issues or any other random issue. Now, I dunno abt u guys but an 80% failure rate is a heck of a high one for me to use it.

But, let’s assume that we got all of these technical problems out of the way, and simply when I send a MMS, it will reach my intended recipient. Would I still use it?

Well, I think not yet. There are a few things to still consider:

• KISS (Keep it simple, sweety) for us => Although this is really not that big, but I have been fiddling around with my phone for the last 10 minutes and I have pressed all kinds of buttons only just to figure out how to send it. Got too many configurations, requires too many settings. Very un-user friendly still….
• Would the dog eat the dog food? => Why do I need to send an image to anyone? Sometimes, I need to talk to a person to discuss stuff (so phone call), other times I need to drop a note to a person (so SMS), do I generally go to a person and show him photos (unless they are close friends). Even if I do, it is never that urgent that I need to send it by my phone. Not a regular thing, is it?
• Show me the money? => The telcos still have a very tight grip on the way money flows, they are the only ones benefiting. There are no partners doing anything for the Telcos making it a one sided game. No one’s really that excited
• Evangalizers or Salesmen? => We have more and more funky sales techniques from 1 MMS = 3 SMS to now 1 MMS = 1 SMS seamless converstion, but every proponent of it is a salesman and not an evangalizer. Just not interested! Thank you.

Very simply, in my view, the main mistake is “listen”. Listen to what people want – something cool/hip straight forward, super simple and pretty cheap. They are getting the free 30-900 MMS Free a month thing, so they are getting that right, but everything else… not really.

Make everyone around super excited about it. Once a “cool” group starts messaging around; they’ll have influence over another group, and the viral effect will start. They can achieve the same with advertising. The MMS urge and excitement is so lacking.

Now this is the youth market. Why youths? Because they have been always on top of the tech trends, always the Early Adopters of every thing new and cool. How about the older segment? They are pragmatists. They need high value, low cost with proven results only then will they move.

Hmm…. what else….? Can’t think of anything else of the top of my head. Anyone got any fierce objections? benevolent additions? or just simply any comments about this? What do you guys think?