In the U.S., the revenues of the telephone industries are about 25
times the size of those of the television and movie industries combined.
In addition, when people are asked to rank the importance of their
internet applications, e-mail almost always tops all the others,
and syncronous "chat" rarely places above third.
Two facts are clear: one-to-one communications are vastly more
lucrative than one-to-many applications with their "content", and
the true value of internet messaging rests in the fact that you do
not have to interrupt whatever you are doing to receive a message.
Why do the business leaders of the major internet and cellphone
companies seem to not understand these facts?
People need to point these facts out firmly and repeatedly. I, for
one, feel like I should advocate this position until the marketplace
responds with the solutions that my employer and I need: a
cellphone that can send and receive MIME email audio attachments.
So get a PBX that does VPIM, and dial into it.
Our current solution is very similar to this, and has multiple
problems, the most important being that it is much more complicated
for the end-user than it needs to be.
You think MIME audio attachments work over iMODE but not over WAP.
I don't know what the new Docomo products do; that's why I'm asking.
This problem is not specific to VPIM, or email; the mobile aspects
(e.g., the lack of mobile carriers providing end-to-end Internet)
form a problem bigger than the IETF. If someone would point me to
a cellphone industry public forum I would gladly take my advocacy there.
Cheers,
James