The APAC One event in Malaysia this year was more like a party for the twenty-eight Dialogic employees and 128 customers, who got together to deliberate on mobile applications and solutions.

The three-day conference begun with a keynote by Dialogic CEO Nick Jensen, who said playing with forms of video applications can help companies find a new way to drive communications market.

The newer forms of mobile video are likely to become popular with Gen-next. Video versions ranging from ring-back tones, videos SMS, user-generated content, to mobile TV are some of the forms that have added more value to mobile applications.

Latest entrants video SMS solution, video ring-back tones, video micro-blogging, and video surveillance (home monitoring), are being projected as the hot new services.

According to IDC it is too early to give a verdict on the success of video-based applications, but what is certain is that video ring back tones and video SMS will help companies reap high profits against traditional ring tones and SMSes. Video also gives a personal touch, which was a key factor in making audio ring-back tones a hit too.

Jim Machi, senior marketing VP, Dialogic said, “Value-added services is a touch world, it requires continuous development and innovation. It may not essentially be developing a new service each time, but can simply be adding a feature to existing ones. Adding video to existing services like SMS is just that.”

One basic element working in favor of video value-add, according to Dialogic, is that it doesn't depend on 3G-level bandwidths to work, which implies a much wider potential customer base, especially in non-3G markets like China and India.

Yankee Group analyst XJ Wang said service providers are under greater pressure than ever to find new value-added services to increase their ARPUs. “The biggest challenge for operators is that both voice and SMS are becoming a commodity, which means more price squeezing,” Wang said.

“Video could prove to be a key element of value-adding strategies going forward, but only if it does not turn out to be very expensive,” he added.

Heena Jhingan
heenaj@cybermedia.co.in