UK mobile users are increasingly turning to social applications such eBuddy, mig33, Bing, Cellity, EQO, Nimbuzz, Flurry, and Trutap for messaging and photo sharing at the expense of MMS, according to GetJar, the mobile application portal. A statistically precise survey of GetJar’s UK users is claimed to have revealed that 15% had already dropped MMS in favour of application-based messaging.

Regular MMS users also said to have reported reliability and service problems, with only one third finding their attempts to send MMS messages to be successful every time. A further 31% reported that they had rarely or never successfully sent an MMS message via their mobile. The final third of users indicated that they didn’t use their phone to send photos at all.

“Only a short time ago, application-based messaging was unheard of, and now we can see a significant trend towards this form of social communication,” explained Ilja Laurs, Founder and CEO of GetJar. “Users experience a wide range of setup and compatibility issues in their use of MMS, which applications are helping them to overcome - and they are doing so for free.”

GetJar has also reported a steep climb in the popularity of messaging applications, both from developers and in the level of downloads, with over 3.7 million downloads by users per month.

GetJar’s survey received replies from nearly 600 UK users, with trends in territories such as the USA showing similar developments.

Also Mike Grenville of 160 Characters Association wrote about how MMS unreliability drives users to alternatives. If you like to read more please take a look here.

The 3rd Mobile Media Summit held as part of the 20th medienforum.nrw is dedicated to the discussion of the mobile Internet. In view of the saturated market for mobile telephony services, the wireless industry is now focusing on mobile Internet services. Mobile devices are intended to integrate online services, Web 2.0, advertising, videos, and games. Already, network operators, software companies and mobile phone manufacturers are hustling for the best starting positions. This combination of wireless telephony and Internet creates new growth potential.

On June 11, 2008 mobile experts meet to discuss on three different panels the following topics:

Mobile Internet - Fighting for the best Start Position

Mobile Social Web - Web 2.0 in pocket format

Mobile Advertising - right next to the Consumer

Sarik Weber, Founder and VP Marketing of cellity AG will be on the panel “Mobile Social Web - Web 2.0 in pocket format” with Olaf Kroll, Director Business Development Europe of Fox Interactive Media/ MySpace.com to talk about starting opportunities and latest trends. Click here to view the complete program.

Nina Seidel, Sunday, April 20, 2008

Sarik Weber, our VP Marketing and Founder of cellity, met Om Malik of GigaOM in the US. He brought him up to speed on our company, but he also mentioned that we had launched a Facebook application that allows you to send free SMS messages to anyone worldwide. Om Malik signed up for the app but also looked at the competitive landscape and found that there are around three dozen (free) SMS-related apps, but they have little or no usage. Even the best ones get about 500 users a day, though most have fewer than 50 daily users. (Related story: 5 Ways to SMS for free.) The state of these SMS apps is no different from many social voice applications (voice widgets). The only difference being that the VoIP widgets have high incidence of installs but comparatively low daily usage.

These two examples made him question the viability of Facebook as a communications hub. Oms columnist Daniel Berninger has eloquently made an argument for a social directory that uses Facebook and other social networks to break away from the current paradigm of numeric phone numbers. He is part of a group that believes social networks could be used to authenticate our “communication” relationships. Om Malik does not necessarily disagree with Daniel, but the usage metrics of SMS and voice apps makes him wonder if Facebookers really want to do anything more than throw Vampire Bites, Scrabble and pretend to have a lot of friends.