3 ms·

Was there any country that MMS ever took off and was actually used in practice, beyond proof of concept?

tssva 5y ago
The US where it is currently still widely used.
daneel_w 5y ago
It saw pretty common usage in Sweden, and I'm convinced we weren't alone. The advent of iMessage, smartphones and mobile data traffic changed a lot.
tasha0663 5y ago
I have 21 unread messages for today in the "Family Text" which is a sprawling MMS conversation with relatives where not everyone gets the image others are talking about, and the messages don't always arrive in sequence if at all. We should really be doing this another way, so yes, please kill MMS.
mastercheif 5y ago
MMS was popular enough in the US that when Apple added MMS support in iPhoneOS 3.0, at&t delayed supporting it for iPhone users based on fears that it would bog down their cellular data infrastructure.
vel0city 5y ago
I'm in the US. I started using MMS quite a bit in 2003, about the time I got my first 3G phone. It was quite handy for sending photos with family, and I had several friends who also could receive MMS without issue. At the time the carriers in the area counted MMS messages the same as SMS messages, so if you had a texting plan you usually could also use MMS at no extra cost. Thus it was easy to share photos from our early camera phones with each other, before Facebook or Whatsapp even existed. And then when Facebook did exist but before using a Facebook app was a thing you could upload photos to things like Facebook through MMS gateways as well. Most of the original photos I uploaded to Facebook were things uploaded from a camera phone through MMS messages as it was quite easy to do. I used to use the MMS email gateway a decent bit as well. It made it really easy to get notifications for things before I got a Symbian phone with IMAP on it and could just use my regular email on the go. I still get some notifications through the MMS gateway from some services. I still use MMS a decent bit. Its still the least common denominator between everyone I know for group messaging, and for the most part is a somewhat seamless experience between Android phones, iPhones, and non-smartphones. I do tend to do most of my messaging through an app, but probably 10% of my messages still go through SMS/MMS these days for those people who I don't have an overlapping app with, usually because they only use iMessage or they don't have a smartphone.

The US where it is currently still widely used.

It saw pretty common usage in Sweden, and I'm convinced we weren't alone. The advent of iMessage, smartphones and mobile data traffic changed a lot.

tasha0663 5y ago

I have 21 unread messages for today in the "Family Text" which is a sprawling MMS conversation with relatives where not everyone gets the image others are talking about, and the messages don't always arrive in sequence if at all. We should really be doing this another way, so yes, please kill MMS.

mastercheif 5y ago

MMS was popular enough in the US that when Apple added MMS support in iPhoneOS 3.0, at&t delayed supporting it for iPhone users based on fears that it would bog down their cellular data infrastructure.

vel0city 5y ago

I'm in the US. I started using MMS quite a bit in 2003, about the time I got my first 3G phone. It was quite handy for sending photos with family, and I had several friends who also could receive MMS without issue. At the time the carriers in the area counted MMS messages the same as SMS messages, so if you had a texting plan you usually could also use MMS at no extra cost. Thus it was easy to share photos from our early camera phones with each other, before Facebook or Whatsapp even existed. And then when Facebook did exist but before using a Facebook app was a thing you could upload photos to things like Facebook through MMS gateways as well. Most of the original photos I uploaded to Facebook were things uploaded from a camera phone through MMS messages as it was quite easy to do. I used to use the MMS email gateway a decent bit as well. It made it really easy to get notifications for things before I got a Symbian phone with IMAP on it and could just use my regular email on the go. I still get some notifications through the MMS gateway from some services. I still use MMS a decent bit. Its still the least common denominator between everyone I know for group messaging, and for the most part is a somewhat seamless experience between Android phones, iPhones, and non-smartphones. I do tend to do most of my messaging through an app, but probably 10% of my messages still go through SMS/MMS these days for those people who I don't have an overlapping app with, usually because they only use iMessage or they don't have a smartphone.