The Case for MMS on the iPhone

Apple, it is time to fix a problem that is experienced every day by some of your best customers. It is time to do something about how you and AT&T handle MMS.

For those of you who don't know, MMS stands for Multimedia Messaging Service. It is a standard protocol that cell carriers use to send photos from phone to phone. You may know of a similar technology called SMS or Text Messaging. Well, MMS is picture messaging. You actually don't need to know any of that, because nearly all modern cellphones do not require you to know anything about it. They let you send text messages and picture messages to your friend's phones, and they take care of the technical stuff behind the scenes. Someone with a typical cellphone can take a photo, punch in a friend's mobile number, and within a few seconds, their friend will receive the photo on their phone. Fun!

Picture messaging is a standard. It's been available for over a decade, and is very well established in most parts of the world. According to Comscore M:Metrics, picture messaging has grown 60% in the US over the past year. In April 2008, almost one quarter of mobile users in the US sent or received MMS messages. And that is before the Summer months, when MMS sees even more usage.¹ In perusing AT&T's website today, I could not find a phone they offer that does not support picture messaging. Even the free phones and the phones that do not have a built-in camera are able to receive picture messages. Except for the Apple iPhone.

If you are an iPhone customer (and your account is set up properly at AT&T²), you can not send or receive picture messages. There are workarounds for this, but they are poor. Let's say one of your friends sends a photo to your phone number. Instead of receiving the photo on your shiny new iPhone, you receive a text message that invites you to retrieve the photo from an AT&T website at viewmymessage.com. You get two codes to input into the website to retrieve the photo. Unfortunately, the codes are long strings of characters that are hard or impossible to memorize. Because the iPhone does not have copy and paste, you generally have to jot down the codes to get the message. In any case, it is a multi-step process. The viewmymessage website is simple, but it is terribly slow. It also is not designed to be viewed on a mobile browser. This results in you having to zoom and scroll to get a glimpse of the tiny version of the photo they display. There is no way for you to save the photo. Unfortunately, a large and growing number of AT&T and Apple customers are subjected to this terrible user experience. According to compete.com's site analytics, the viewmymessage site is getting nearly a half-million unique visitors every month, and it's traffic has grown more tha 28% since a year ago.³

Now suppose you want to send a photo to a friend from your iPhone. You can, of course, email it to them. Emailing something is not the same, though. Think about when you are sitting at your computer. There are times that you would email someone, and there are other times that you want to use Instant Messaging (IM). Different messages call for different modes of communication. Sometimes you want the photo to get to them right now. With most phones, you can take the photo, punch in their number, and go. You can not with the iPhone. Again, there are workarounds. If you know what cell carrier your friend is on, and you know the schema that carrier uses, you can construct an email address that would send the photo to their phone. For example, if you happen to know that your friend is on Verizon Wireless, you can attach the photo to an email to <10digitphonenumber>@vzwpix.com and it might get to their phone.⁴ The problems here are obvious: You need to know your friends carrier. You need to know that carrier's email schema. You have to go through the steps of attaching to an email.

Whether you are sending or receiving, being on an iPhone takes all the fun out of picture messaging.

Now, I never like to complain about a problem without proposing a solution. In this case, I'd like to propose a short-term improvement, and a long-term solution.

In the short term, this terrible user experience can be improved by doing the following:

• Make the link in the viewmymessage notification clickable. By eliminating the need to jot down and re-enter codes, the experience could be slightly more quick and fun. The indentifying info could be embedded in the URL itself.
• Improve the performance of viewmymessage.com. Surely, between Apple and AT&T, someone has some server horsepower to apply to this customer-facing site.
• Make the UI for viewmymessage friendly to mobile browser, especially Safari. I would hazard to guess that the majority of traffic to this site is from iPhone customers today.
• Add a way for viewers to save the photo for safekeeping. Being able to forward it to an email address would suffice.
• Set up an email service so I can send photos to my friends' phones. I should be able to send a photo to 10digitphonenumber@attphotoshare.com (or something) and have it get to my friend regardless of their carrier. Surely, AT&T can make this work.

The long-term solution, of course, is to add MMS support to the iPhone itself. People are asking for it. If you do a search for "iPhone MMS" on Google, you get over 8 million results.⁵ Many online forums (including Apple's and AT&T's) are filled with people asking for the feature. I would argue that AT&T would want it, because more messaging means more revenue. It could even be released as an app on the App Store, which could mean some revenue for Apple or a developer.

Please, Apple. Add MMS support to the iPhone.

UPDATE 10/30/2008: The response to this post has been overwhelming. Please read an update with responses and new info here: An Update on the Case for MMS on the iPhone

Footnotes:
1. http://www.mobile-ent.biz/news/30888/MMS-usage-up-60-per-cent-in-US
2. I had a third chat with AT&T Wireless support today trying to get my Apple iPhone 3G to handle MMS messages the way it is supposed to. It's an awful lot of work to get to a shamefully substandard user experience. This is a long story, worthy of a future blog post.
3. http://siteanalytics.compete.com/viewmymessage.com?metric=uv
4. I say "might" because in my experience this method seems to be highly unreliable.
5. http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=iphone+mms

Comments

[nneonneo]

The Safari that comes with the 2.0/2.1 firmware has the ability to save images. Hold your finger over an image for ~2 seconds and you will be prompted to save the image. I don't know if it works with the images on viewmymessage.com, but it does work with the AT&T logo on the page (I have an iPod touch, not an iPhone, but I imagine that anything my touch can do, the iPhone should be able to do, as the software is nearly identical)

[Dan Woods]

I'm in the minority who aren't phased by the iPhone's lack of MMS support.
When Apple have MobileMe working properly, eMail notification will be as responsive as MMS on other Handsets.

What we need are the Service Providers to have some sort of MMS-IMAP service and iPhone Mail to be able to handle all the Media formats of MMS.

It would be much more elegant than viewing your MMS messages on a non-interactive Webpage.

[scrufus]

That's probably also one thing I forgot to mention about not getting the iPhone. Here in Asia, MMS is used a lot specially with the proliferation of cheap, low res camera phones. It's just the easiest way to show someone something instantly. And everyone most probably has MMS support on their phones but not email.

As for viewing MMS via iPhone's Safari. It's quite possible that you don't key in anything to access your account as long as you're using the carrier's WAP/WEB gateway. They have the ability to detect that you're using your phone to access the site so it doesn't need to authenticate.

[dwf]

I managed 3 revs of Treo's MMS client. The carriers totally botched this standard. It's too complicated to begin with. Each carrier has their own customizations. Add to this inter-carrier compatibility madness and you have a world of hurt (to paraphrase his Steveness).

I agree that your iPhone should "receive" MMS messages better than it does. But MMS authoring is a slippery slope to madness.

My money is that Apple took one look at the AT&T MMS requirements and said "Our phone will not support this crap." And AT&T said "OK" if for no other reason than they weren't originally on the hook for subsidization.

This is one of those times when Apple made a large "less is more" decision that ultimately made the product much better.

[Robocub]

Very well stated argument. I honestly don't get why Apple won't do MMS. And I have spoken to several AT&T employees and they told me this was not AT&T's doing, it was solely Apple's request. It just makes no sense.

[Paul Williamson]

Bloody annoying not having MMS.. I have been using it for 5 years here in Australia and suddenly the greatest phone comes out and it doesn't support it. A picture is worth 1000 words.. who wants to be typing away on their phone instead of enjoying their environment...

I won't buy an iphone until it has it and it is frustrating the shit out of me... It's a great way to instantly show people a restaurant.. a product you are buying.. the nice view you are seeing.. apple need to get the hell onto this ASAP!

The phone is capable of being programmed to do anything, it is just up to apple to DO IT..

[Justin]

This has been a feature I've been wanting for my iPhone from the day I got the 1st gen model. With every update there's still a lingering hope they'll drop it in for us. Yet after a few minor updates and major updates. Nothing. Not even a mention of it. Apple is for all intents and purposes ignoring the issue. I'm sick of waiting around for it. I've been seriously considering getting a BlackBerry and selling off my iPhone. Its hard because otherwise I really do love my iPhone. This is really the only feature missing for me. My friends send me pics and vids all the time and using viewmymessage.com is ridiculous. Its considered a site for non-subscribers. WE are non-subscribers? And seriously, what's the big deal? That would add more functionality to it. Let us use MMS OR email it to our friends. Why not allow us the choice? Apple listened to the Enterprise when they wanted Exchange and other features, its time to listen to the consumers now!

[raju]

Folks, MMS is a wonderful way to encourage viruses and other miscreant files. MMS does not integrate well with the iphoto manager on the iphone. additionally, all of the useless bits of information that come along with an mms message, wrapping the message in a cloak of identity, is too difficult to remove. Thus it is not included.

Now copy and paste? A different matter altogether.

[Whacko]

I could care less for MMS. It costs way too much, plus I can Email for free, and check it anywhere in the world, no limit on picture size, which MMS does have.
Also I think it's funny how many sites quote the 60% increase in MMS use, when specific amounts aren't mentioned anywhere (not even in the original press release here: http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2308)
An increase of the total amount of MMS users doesn't mean that much. (its _NOT_ 60% of all Mobile phone users)
Let's say there are 1 million mobile phone users.
It doesn't say anywhere how many people actually use MMS. So let's be over dramatic and say its only 100 people using MMS. If that increased to 160, you'd have your 60% increase. but still the total amount of MMS users is only 0.016% of the total of 1million mobile phone users.
My tip: Don't trust percentages if you don't know what they represent. Always check the numbers.
Now I know my example is exaggerated, but think about this: if the numbers WERE significant. And suddenly it increases by 60%, don't you think it would be much more popular? I can honestly I only used it once or twice on my old phone. And I don't know anyone who uses it regularly.

I do agree on your points about the viewmymessage.com service. Sounds like it could use some work (I've never used it).

[Joe Richards]

Hello.

This is the most frustrating thing since my bank asked me to repeat my account number even though I'd already typed it in.

In the UK I have made a complaint to O2 since receiving the iPhone regarding this, I had no idea the feature was going to be missing.

They have referred me to Apple.

I am going to complain to Apple now.

We all need to complain, to force them somehow to at least make a statement as to WHY it's missing and WHEN it will be available, if ever - if they announce never, at least some of us can make a decision whether to stick with the iPhone or not.

It's not fair for all their customers to be in the dark.

So, is there some kind of petition (that is in direct communication with Apple) already started I'm wondering?

Let's start it!

Joe (joerichards AT gmail.com

[Brian]

FetchMMS.com

[kelly]

1) I cannot access ViewMyMessage on my iPhone. It just refuses to load. So any pictures sent to me have to wait until I get home to my computer.

2) Once I load the picture from ViewMymessage on my computer, I get a tiny little picture. (One time the password sent to me was wrong, and I was denied access to seeing the picture entirely! I've noticed that the password scheme is usually two four letter words separated by a number. When this password ended with a three-letter word and wouldn't let me in, I wondered what happened.0

3) You CAN save the picture, once you're at home. Just print to a PDF, and it will save as a nice large picture.

[Michael Mueller]

In Germany you can buy train tickets online via a website designed for mobile phones. Works perfectly. The problem is: You get the ticket (a barcode) as MMS. Which works perfectly with NEARLY all mobile phones :)
MMS is not only a nice thing for sending and receiving pictures, I suppose it is a minimum standard in any cell phone...

[Med]

Michael Mullet I totally agree with you, the minimum is more important than the quantity !

[iPhone MMS]

Shamless self-promotion but we've got a workaround in the UK on O2 that lots of users are quite happy with... We're keen to bring it to other countries on other networks.

http://iphonemms.net/

[Bud]

It seems some of those those reading here cannot read.

It is similar to the same reasons you cannot just buy any phone to use with any carrier. The Telco does not WANT you to have that control

The reason Apple does not do MMS, is because ultimately, it is the CARRIERS problem.
And the interaction between various carriers, who may or may not wish to support their slightly different tweaks, or may wish to deny other carriers access to that aspect of their service, or may wish to try to nickel and dime their customers for the service.

At the root of the MMS problem, is that the MMS service is basically much like an email protocal, with the various carriers setting up email for you, and also, stripping those email like attributes so the user does not realize you are sending words and pictures to a server to be held until someone is ready to see them.

It is really not Apples problem to fix. Apple decided just to avoid the mess completely and use web standards, not purposely broken MMS protocals being used as swords in a fight between carriers.

[knowitall]

MMS was omitted from the iPhone due to battery life concerns. MMS requires higher data usage, given the iPhone's 2 megapixel camera. Most other cell phones (non-iPhones) would not be able to handle the iPhone's pictures, resulting in wasted bandwidth and, more importantly, battery life. In order to provide a quality MMS experience, Apple would need to figure out a way to quickly and seamlessly down-size the picture on the phone to reduce the demand on the battery when transmitting the picture over the cell phone network. When they figure out how to do this, trust me they will release it in a software update. Meanwhile, why can't we forward text messages? And where the hell is copy-and-paste?

[Pete]

Hookmobile, O2, iPhoneMMS - for all their best intentions, are half-useless (along with a few other similar apps), can't RECEIVE MMS's on your iPhone. Shocking that Apple is being such a bunch of Pr**ks about not allowing MMS, but then again, it's Apple...the company who's otherwise excellent computer products are religated to a few niche markets because of inane business paradigms. I'm sure Swirly's submission to the app store was rejected, if they could get it to work, why not Apple? ATT could bypass the limitation by detecting and re-routing inbound text messages with MMS content to email rather than some hokey website that doesn't even have a mobile device interface, but either hasn't thought of it (like they haven't thought of calendar sync on Blackberry), doesn't care, or is afraid of Apple. They could even use a dedicated email address combined with a Hookmobile-like interface to provide seamless inbound/outbound MMS functionality without ACTUALLY doing MMS on the iPhone. I love my iPhone, but I'm frequently embasrrased by conversations like this one....

Me - Early adopter, techno geek, into the latest and best technologies.
Cro-Magnan - Utterly non technical, just discovered fire, owns a rotary-dial cell phone.

The typical conversation...
Cro-Magnan: U get cool pic me just send to phone?
Me: No, I have an iPhone, it doesn’t get MMS’s
Cro-Magnan: What is MMS? I no get note say u can’t get pic.
Me: Uh, yea…it doesn’t tell you I couldn’t get it, it just never gets delivered.
Cro-Magnan: Ugh! Why U pay 400 rocks and 40 rocks a month for iPhone then?
Me: Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

[pete]

Also, have to ask why????????

- No flash player (REALLY aggravating on a phone marketed as giving you the "REAL Internet")
- No Copy and Paste
- I want to call someone that just sent me a text, have to scroll through 4000 lines of conversation to reach the call button at the top, easier to just leave IM, go to Phone, look up in contacts and call...STUPID put a damn button at the bottom already.
- No Bluetooth headset support (HUH???)
- Crappy speakers (this is a music device, right? can barely hear it ring)
- Can't store other stuff on it (like a USB drive - would be handy)
- Can't sync or transfer via Bluetooth

[Lesley]

I'm with you here!

I have had about 6 phones which supported MMS, how many times did I actually send messages? About three times!

You're completely correct about percentages, they are usually used in media reports in the very same way! How many people REALLY want MMS when there are so many other advantages to the phone, it's not there yet, but I predict the phone will have at least 25% GLOBAL market share by the end of 2012, proving the same spike of interest in year three of the iPods (once Mini & Nano were out!)Take a look at the graph half way down this page

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod

at the growth of iPods. It will take the best part of three years, much like the iPod's growth for the proliferation into the mainstream mobile telecoms market. We, the early users of the iPod, are again at the beginning of the next big thing, we will
personally advertise the iPhone, pushing for friends, family, and all and sundry to buy this gadget.

The iPod now commands something like 80% of the Global MP3 player market (not inc. phones which play music!) and has been so deeply engrained into mainstream culture that most people actually use the phrase iPod over MP3 player even if it isn't an iPod (refer to the following, Hoover, Sony 'Walkman' etc!)

Having said this, the iPhone's growth is stunted in a way the iPod's growth was not, and this is in respect to third party carriers who need to be involved, and this takes more time (although having said this Apple do claim 70 countries by the end of this year!)

I, personally, have had two, the 2nd gen and 3G. I, was one of the few who went straight for the phone as soon as I could, but only due to my feelings about Apple. I would say I have been instrumental at 'prompting' at least 5-6 people to buy one after showing them mine. Within 18 months of the release in the UK, four best friends have bought, 2 work collegues and a bunch of wishlisters!

We are the ones who really sell the device, and if MMS still isn't on the phone after the next major software update, the numbers will continue to grow. Some people loved Betamax (better than VHS!) Some people Loved 8 TRACK (Better than tape!) Some people LOVED Laserdisc, need I go on..

We don't choose the route, we follow it, and if Apple aren't giving it to us, then there is a reason. I'm big on Apple and know that if they don't like, then I probably won't either!

Just email the damn pix, they'll get to see them eventually, even if it's the next time you see them in the pub and you show them the picture on your iPhone, the phone with the best Music player, the best Photo browser Application, the best iPod (MP3 player) and a whole bunch of the best Apps from 3rd Party Devs.

Nuff Said!