A multimedia messaging platform for content delivering

Short messaging (SMS) is a well known and widely used messaging system in mobile phones. European mobile users especially are interested in using short messaging communication and services. Short messaging is a text-based system where the user can send messages consisting of approx. 160-characters. The next evolution version of SMS is EMS (enhanced messaging service), which is already being used in some mobile phone models. EMS supports melodies, pictures, sounds, animations and modified text in additions to plain text. Pictures and animations are based on black and white. MMS (multimedia messaging service) follows SMS and EMS. The first MMS steps have already been taken in 2002, but there will be wider use of MMS in 2003 when operator interoperability problems have been solved and there are more mobile terminals available on the market. This study describes the MMS environment in general and the work to make a multimedia content distribution platform. This platform is basically server-based, however there are many things that should be taken into account from the mobile terminal point of view. If the terminal model does not support multimedia content, the message may not be correctly received. Also, the needs of different kinds of end user groups should be taken into account.