Telecommunications companies must work quickly to smooth out glitches in the newest wireless services, such as multimedia messaging, to revive growth after the industry's worst slump ever, executives said.
France Telecom SA, Vodafone Group Plc and rivals have begun selling services for handsets equipped with cameras made by companies such as Nokia Oyj and Samsung Electronics Co. They don't always work when a customer tries to send a photo to someone using a different brand phone or a different network.
"The fact is that sending an MMS even within the same network can yield some very strange results," Douglas Li, chief executive officer of Hong Kong's SmarTone Telecommunications Holding Ltd, said at the annual 3GSM World Congress.
"It is a major challenge facing our industry," he said.
Cegetel chief executive officer Frank Esser demonstrated the challenge when he sent a photo from his vacation at the Meribel ski resort in France from a Panasonic-brand handset over his company's network to a user with a Sony Ericsson Communications Ltd phone. The photo that turned up was half the size of a thumbnail.
Still reeling from record losses and battered stocks, companies are trying to entice consumers to buy new phones and adopt the new services.
How well multimedia messaging works may determine appetite for the next generation of cellphone services, executives said.
"The stories we're picking up is that it's turning a lot of consumers off," said Tom Lynch, president of Motorola Inc's phone division.
"There is that risk" that operators and handset makers have promised too much, he said.
Motorola, Nokia and Ericsson AB have lost a combined US$400 billion in market value since May 2000 as demand for phones stagnated and spending on networks plunged. Ericsson has racked up six straight quarterly losses, while Motorola in January reported its first consecutive quarters of net income in two years.
NTT DoCoMo Inc, the world's second-biggest phone company by sales, launched its third-generation phone in October 2001 and has missed its subscriber targets for the service, known as FOMA, as handset deliveries were delayed and network connections patchy.
Global handset sales fell for the first time in 2001 and barely budged last year, as markets neared saturation and users put off upgrades. Earlier technologies designed to help move data over wireless networks have flopped because consumers found the services difficult to install and unreliable.
The theme of the 3GSM World Congress this year is "delivering the promise."
"Network interoperability has to be worked out," said David Shepard, general manager of Texas Instruments Inc's wireless networks unit.
"The different networks have to be able to talk to one another," he said.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique