iMMS: Interactive multimedia messaging service

Multimedia messaging service (MMS) promises a dramatic increase in messaging capabilities for mobile phone users that will enrich their experience. For network operators and content and service providers, it will create a major new source of revenue because it adds features such as color pictures, animations, audio samples, and video clips. However, the current MMS standard provides only a few features that support user interaction, limiting the wide use of value-added messaging services. In this paper, we propose interactive MMS (iMMS) technology that can extend the current MMS standard and enhance interaction capability by embedding eXtensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML) technology into MMS Presentation Language. Moreover, an MMS application server (MAS) is presented in our research work. This framework can help service providers to quickly develop and deploy MMS services. We have implemented and tested a prototype that includes an interactive MMS client on a handheld device and an MAS on a Microsoft Windows 2000 server.