Colibria, which provides mobile Instant Messaging (IM) and Presence-enabling solutions, has revealed that African operator MTN has launched a new generation Mobile IM service in South Africa, based on Colibrias award-winning Elevate platform. MTN is the leading provider of communications services in Africa and the Middle East with over 54 million subscribers in 21 countries.
According to Colibria, MTNs new noknok mobile IM service takes mobile messaging a significant step forward and lays the foundations for an entirely new, community-based mobile experience. The feature-rich service enables MTN subscribers to impulsively communicate and share experiences with individuals and groups via mobile IM. With Presence also enabled as part of the service, subscribers can additionally see what their friends are up to, how they are feeling and whether they are available to chat or talk at a glance.
This is one of our most exciting deployments yet, says Colibria CEO, Keith Gibson. Africa is one of the key major global growth regions for the telecoms industry, especially mobile services. Furthermore, subscribers here have been using third-party mobile IM services for the past three years, making South Africa a unique and highly competitive market. We believe this deployment will illustrate how mobile operators can win the battle for mobile Instant Messaging revenues by providing a feature-rich service.
South Africa has a relatively high penetration of mobile phones and a relatively low penetration of PCs and broadband, making it an ideal market for mobile IM. However, many of the mobile phones in use are not recent models, making it a challenging environment for advanced mobile IM services. The Colibria solution deployed by MTN is fully interoperable with SMS, via the interworking module, and also provides innovative mobile and PC-based Instant Messaging clients, including a WAP client. Supporting SMS continuity, as advocated by the GSMAs Personal IM Initiative, is a vital part of ensuring a seamless messaging experience for all users, Colibria says. It notes also that with todays consumers increasingly searching for new, exciting and interactive ways of communicating, mobile operators are increasingly seeing mobile IM as one of the largest business opportunities since the launch of SMS.
Todays consumers are searching for new, exciting and interactive ways of communicating with individuals, groups and communities, says Ashraff Paruk, GM Strategy at MTN. We believe this deployment will not only help satisfy that demand and differentiate our brand, but also provide the catalyst for a higher level of interaction amongst our subscribers.
Rather than replacing voice or existing messaging technologies, mobile IM provides a complimentary revenue-generating service. Strategy Analytics believes the mobile IM market will be worth $4.6 billion (2.3 billion) by 2011.
In 2007, Colibria also powered Europes first commercial inter-operator mobile IM service, providing the interconnect between Telefonica and Vodafone Live Messenger in Spain, as well as Asias first interconnect mobile IM service, between DiGi and Maxis in Malaysia.