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| WiderThan Offers Advanced Emoticon and Photo Services WiderThan and SK Telecom have 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. 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. write your comments about the article :: © 2006 Computing News :: home page |