So far, MMS has proven a damp squib for the companies that hoped that it would take off like SMS and provide that magic boost to the bottom line and the good old ARPU (average revenue per user).
In the UK, 79 percent of mobile users have never sent or received an MMS, according to NOP research done for network software producer Sarip. Admittedly, 45 percent of them just don't have the kit; while another 1 percent aren't even sure if they do or not.
For those who have sent and received MMS, 78 percent have used it for pics of family and friends, 14 for sports clips, 13 for holiday postcards and 27 percent for music clips. The top user is male, 15-24, and lives in the north.
Only the music clips and football seem to offer the operators any potential for the day-in, day-out boost to the bottom line that they are praying for.
And they look with envy at the soaring take-up of MMS and 3G in South-East Asia, which was triggered by the World Cup in 2002.
"We still have a lot more to do as an industry to encourage consumers to embrace MMS in the same way as they have SMS," said Sicap's head of marketing, Per-John Lundin.
Besides driving the handsets into the hands of the customers, Lundin says the services need to be "extremely user-friendly like Vodafone Live! But the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle is compelling content."
Talkback
Something tells me that this has a lot less to do with the technologies as the mobile phone companies would like to believe and more to do with the cost.
A 55% take up of MMS in a matter of years shows a very tech savvy user base and of that only 17% do not know how, the fact that people were so willijng to shell out on camera phones shows that it's not a matter of picture quality either.
Purely it comes down to price, obviously texts serve a greater purpose than pictures ever will but at 40p per MMS more if a large file, menas that the general public are unlikely to sent a picture without thinking about the cost.
While text messages come in bundles and are reasonably priced to begin with, Picture messages are likely to run up costs very quickly. Until the advent of a widespread 3G network and/or cheaper picture messages this is likely to remain.