By Paul Drury
Eircell customers can now reply to e-mails by voice over their mobile phones. The spoken message is received by the original sender as an e-mail attachment. The technology for the new service has been provided by Irish wireless systems developer Jinny Software. Eircell is the first operator in Ireland and one of the first in Europe to offer such a service.
Demand for streaming media services of this kind on mobile devices is expected to grow fast and it is anticipated that the global market will be worth USD2.5 billion by 2004, according to Jupiter Research. The new service was announced on Wednesday, the day after Eircell rolled out a new suite of on-line games for its customers, and as parent company Eircom continues efforts to close the sale of Eircell to British-based mobile phone giant Vodafone.
It is an enhanced version of Eircell's existing e-trieve system, also supplied by Jinny, which enables customers to have e-mail messages read to them over their mobile. Full details of the new service are available on Eircell's e-merge Web site (http://www.e-merge.ie).
Customers can continue to send e-mails from their mobile phone using the keypad. Using Jinny's voice streaming e-mail engine, customers can also set up filters so that only urgent or relevant e-mail notifications are received while on the move.
"This is just the start of a move in mobile communications from text based to streaming media services," said Roy Zakka, chief executive officer and founder of Jinny Software. "The wireless industry is moving from text messages to picture messaging, video messaging and eventually to full blown streaming media on mobile devices."
Jinny has provided the technology behind most of Eircell's e-merge portal, including SMS messaging and the more gimmicky but popular "Mobile Mania" material (quirky ring tones and picture messaging). Meanwhile, the price Vodafone will pay for Eircell is now believed to have dropped from euro 5.1 billion to between euro 4.7 billion and euro 4.8 billion, according to Thursday's Irish Independent.
