Will Apple's iPhone finally support MMS?

By Giselle Tsirulnik

September 8, 2009

Apple's iPhone

What is the one thing that Apple’s iPhone lacks? That is a simple answer: MMS.

There’s been a whirlwind of headlines regarding Apple’s iPhone since it first launched.  Consumers and marketers alike are impressed with the phone’s unique capabilities and of course the user experience.

But most would agree that the one thing that the Apple iPhone lacks is it is not capable of MMS.

But all of that is about to change. AT&T released the following statement to its subscribers:

We know many of our iPhone customers are eager for an update on our rollout schedule for Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS). 

We’ve been working for the past several months to prepare our systems and network to ensure the best possible experience with MMS when it launches – and that launch date is: September 25 for iPhone 3G and 3GS customers.

MMS will be enabled through a software update on that day.

We know that iPhone users will embrace MMS.

The unique capabilities and high usage of the iPhone’s multimedia capabilities required us to work on our network MMS architecture to carry the expected record volumes of MMS traffic and ensure an excellent experience from Day One.

We appreciate your patience as we work toward that end.

We’re riding the leading edge of smartphone growth that’s resulted in an explosion of traffic over the

AT&T network. Wireless use on our network has grown an average of 350 percent year-over-year for the past two years, and is projected to continue at a rapid pace in 2009 and beyond.

The volume of smartphone data traffic the AT&T network is handling is unmatched in the wireless industry.

We want you to know that we’re working relentlessly to innovate and invest in our network to anticipate this growth in usage and to stay ahead of the anticipated growth in data demand, new devices and applications for years to come.

We thank you for your business and look forward to keeping you updated on our initiatives.

Comments on "Will Apple's iPhone finally support MMS?"

1. Chris Burns says:

   September 9, 2009 at 8:20am

   William is right, the title of this article is totally off... the iPhoine has been able to deliver MMS since the launch of OS 3.0. It's been working fine on just about every carrier here in Europe... It just seems AT&T is just one of the carriers on the "poor boy" list of carriers worldwide... but then again what else is new ? One would think that something might have changed after 9/11 (2001 that is...) when all the cellphone networks were overwhelmed in the US and it wasn't due to MMS...
   

2. Scott Thomsen says:

   September 8, 2009 at 10:50am

   However they deliver it, it's a welcome addition. No mention of pricing... we'll wait to see.
   
   

3. William Cormier says:

   September 8, 2009 at 6:39am

   MMS seems to be more a carrier problem than an Apple iPhone problem. In Canada, Rogers Wireless (exclusive provider of iPhone) has had MMS since the latest update of iPhone 3.0.