The company now controls around 60 per cent of the mobile value-added services market. The total market value is Bt21 billion this year. AIS expects to gain around Bt1.2 billion, of which Bt4.5 million comes from mobile voice applications. The other Bt7.5 million is from mobile non-voice applications.

Somchai Lertsutiwong, vice president of wireless service business at AIS, said that due to the dramatic increase of mobile value-added service revenues, the company planned to roll out new services for both consumers and corporations to benefit in this emerging market segment.

 The company plans to launch a new push-mail service for individuals by the end of this year. Recently, the company launched the service for corporate users.

The service allows mobile users to receive e-mail on their mobile phone as soon as the mail comes to their mailbox. The beauty of this service is that users will not need to access their mailbox at all. The company is negotiating with the two largest free Web e-mail operators to provide push e-mail to mobile users.

Based on the company's total of 18 million subscribers, of which about five million are Internet users, the company targets 10 per cent, or around 500,000 users, to use push-mail services in the next 12 months.

However, on the consumer side, Somchai said the key non-voice application was still music downloading, especially full-song download services and calling melodies. Thailand is in the top three for calling melody subscribers, following China and Korea.

Somchai said another highlight of non-voice applications was cell broadcast technology.

Cell broadcast technology will help turn mobile phones into small multimedia gadgets, allowing users to receive content broadcast from AIS without having requested it. It is similar to the way people receive broadcast content via television.

"This service is different from SMS broadcasts, as the content is not just SMS, but also 'information' or advertising," said Somchai.

To promote cell broadcast technology, the company has embedded the technology onto AIS SIM cards. Around five million SIM cards with cell broadcast technology are in distribution, and the company plans to increase the number of cell-broadcast enabled SIM cards to seven million by the end of this year.

"We began to push content through this technology to AIS users, but in the initial stage, the content was based on text. However, we hope to develop more multimedia content to deliver to users in the future," Somchai said. Content will usually be broadcast to users every 15 minutes, and will be displayed on mobile phone screens for 15 seconds before disappearing.

 "It will not disturb users because it will be displayed on mobile phone screens automatically without requiring users to receive or to access their SMS inbox, and then it will disappear," said Somchai.

 Based on this technology, content developers and other businesses can join AIS to provide their marketing information or advertising through cell broadcast technology.

Asina Pornwasin

The Nation