WiderThan a leading global provider of integrated mobile entertainment solutions for wireless carriers, and SK Telecom , Korea’s largest wireless operator, announced that SK Telecom’s Emoticon SMS (short message service) service, operated and managed by WiderThan, exceeded 1 million subscribers within 10 months of service launch. An Emoticon SMS attaches an icon that depicts an emotion or action through a sequence of characters as opposed to regular text.
Emoticon SMS automatically recognizes certain expressions with the SMS text and attaches a corresponding icon to the mobile message. For instance the service will automatically recognize the phrase, “Happy Birthday” and will attach a matching emoticon, such as a birthday cake with candles and confetti, to the original text.
Currently, Emoticon SMS recognizes and inputs more than 6,000 diverse expressions and images, marking a significant shift in the previous mode of messaging that required mobile users to either manually enter numbers or characters to express an emotion in their text messages. Emoticon SMS is popular among teenagers and currently comprises 10 percent of SK Telecom’s daily text message delivery traffic. “Partnering with WiderThan has enabled us to leverage the popularity of Emoticon SMS and tap into the increasing demand for advanced texting services for our younger, teenage audience. This demand was evident as we surpassed the 1 million mark very quickly,” said Tae Sup Kim, director of communication business at SK Telecom. “WiderThan’s service reduces the rigidness of simple text messaging by adding a visual aspect to text messages and enhancing the overall user experience.” SK Telecom also recently launched WiderThan’s Photo SMS service enabling SK Telecom subscribers to send an image or photo with their text message. As Emoticon SMS evolves to support real images, such as photos, it drives the potential for MMS (multimedia service) traffic through services like Photo SMS and additional revenue streams for wireless carriers. MMS provides automatic delivery of user-created content, such as still images as well as audio and video clips, from phone to phone.
“WiderThan continues to play a key role in paving the path for advanced mobile text messaging which has evolved from purely text based messages to emoticons and now to real images or flash based messages,” continued Kim.
“SMS has a very broad user base and has become increasingly popular for our customers. We saw the untapped potential to move mobile messaging to the next level and wanted to capitalize on it quickly for our customers,” said Sang Jun Park, CEO of WiderThan. “We look forward to continuing to work with key clients such as SK Telecom and elevating the mobile user experience to the next level of sophistication and entertainment.”-By Jonathan Cheah
Will this service come to Malaysia? hmm. still wondering.....
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