Wireless meets multimedia

Mobile person-to-person speech communication has turned out to be extremely popular with more than one billion users today. Currently, mobile networks are evolving to support efficient and flexible data communications. This development will also enable an efficient use of multimedia elements in mobile communication. New content types, applications and services are emerging. Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) is one key element in this development. From the user point of view, it is the continuation of a very popular mobile messaging paradigm and it offers a framework for mobile person-to-person multimedia communication. New mobile phones, with graphical color displays and integrated cameras, will provide a natural platform for a large set of multimedia applications. Including multimedia capabilities for small portable devices is driving the new development on display, imaging and processor technologies. Open software architectures in these terminals are giving new possibilities to the developer community. Evolution of the mobile multimedia will create new challenges and opportunities for related research and development activities. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.