Mobile IM in Finland

If you’re lucky enough to have been in Finland lately—and may even understand the language—you may have noticed a major marketing campaign by Sonera to promote their mobile IM service “mobiili mese”. They advertise it very visibly on TV and bus stops, clearly pouring some strategic amounts of marketing budget into it. And I can tell you, we couldn’t be more thrilled by this tremendous technology push! :) I really hope the campaign will be successful. And I’m sure the other operators aren’t far behind. This enthusiasm is naturally due to the Xernel case being somewhat related to the adoption of mobile IM.

However, for professional reasons I must note here my minor concern over the Sonera’s technology selection, as it’s now based on Microsoft’s walled garden system. But, I’m sure this issue will correct itself in time and that it’s rather unfruitful to worry about. For example, Google must provide Google Talk for the GPhone [1, 2, 3]; it’d be a wonder if they didn’t. And Google Talk is based on the open, real-time communications standard XMPP (a.k.a. Jabber); also Apple is using XMPP in their products.

Above all, I hope we’ll soon be celebrating the dawn of mobile IM! (We’ll see how it turns out.)

Tags: Mobile, Instant Messaging, XMPP