When you buy through affiliate links in our content, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Learn What Does Multimedia Message Service Mean?
Multimedia message service (MMS) is a mobile content exchange mechanism that allows users to transmit and receive videos, images, ringtones and text files.
MMS uses Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) for transmission over mobile wireless networks. MMS also supports email functionality such as sending email directly to email addresses.
MMS is under development by the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA).
Techopedia Explains Multimedia Message Service
When launched, MMS was touted as a successor to short message service (SMS). While SMS only supports text, MMS supports multimedia images, music and videos. Currently, MMS is designed for non-real-time delivery support to recipients lacking a real-time streaming feature.
Several factors impeded MMS adoption. The few MMS-capable device owners encountered device configuration bugs and errors on a continuous basis. In addition, MMS-capable devices were built with varying image sizes, audio codec support and capability levels, which created cross-platform compatibility problems.
To solve these issues, a store and forward server, or multimedia messaging server (MMSC), was developed for content adaptation, a process that involves resizing images and transcoding audio codecs to enable the display of reasonable MMS message likenesses. MMS uses the Internet for message forwarding to recipients that use different service providers.
