A look at mobile instant messaging

Now and again the International Herald Tribune carries some super tech articles and today they’ve taken a look at mobile instant messaging. 

First off they have a wicked summary:

Mobile instant messaging may yet be all that and more, but for now, carriers and software makers are struggling to come up with the winning way to bring instant messaging to cellphones without destroying the market for lucrative mobile text messaging.

Giving your millions of customers free access to instant messaging and charging them data rates, even at current exorbitant fees, could conceivably ‘destroy’ the industry.  You’d still perhaps text one or two people, but generally speaking, if you were ‘always on’ as you are if you’ve switched on MSN Messenger, then why bother with text and the stupid 10 pence/cent per message rate?

Then enter Martin Guberlet of Gartner:

"The GSMA and the operators should leverage the existing communities of users on AOL, MSN, Yahoo and other Internet instant messaging services rather than trying to reinvent the wheel," said Martin Gutberlet, an analyst with Gartner

Agreed. He’s absolutely right. But those existing communities are predicated on the usage being 100% free.  Something that, I’m sure, doesn’t look appetising to a 10p/msg charging mobile operator.

Luke Thomas, an analyst with Frost & Sullivan, said operators should first "get their customers addicted to mobile instant messaging, and then they can start raising prices."

I don’t agree with Luke. In fact I’m not sure what planet he’s on.  I think it’s a nice idea in practice but I don’t think it will wash.  I think the carriers have screwed it all up.  We’ve got 100% penetration or more in many markets — that is, the vast majority of mobile users also have a hotmail, a yahoo or other account.  Invariably, if the user is under 35, that account is also being used as a desktop instant messenger.  For free. 

I think they’ve missed the boat.  Introduce a £10 monthly fee for ‘unlimited MSN’ and I think people will stare at you as though strangely.  A pound, possibly.  Not a lot more.  It’s free.  I might have paid for the service if they’d introduced it in 2001.  When it was novel.  When I could get tickled pink that I could still do IM on a bog standard Nokia when I’d left my desk. 

There is no way you’ll ever replicate SMS with mobile instant messaging.  I am not paying 10 cents, 3 cents or a cent per line of text I type out.  Data charges fine.  But not per line.  The model isn’t there for the consumer.  You’re going to have to do a substantial amount of fancy marketing to change this.

Whatever the discussion, tempted by the stupid amount we pay for texting, it’s ridiculously late in the day to think about charging.