A technical glitch has prevented me getting online at the Coverged Messaging event here in Munich, but I’m now able to live blog from the back of the conference room. One of the key factors relating to the success of a mobile instant messaging (MIM) service is achieving cross-operator interoperability. And demand is there. Despite not being fully interoperable China Mobile have 70 million IM subscribers after launching their MIM proposition a year ago. In Europe penetration levels are much lower due to challenges surrounding interoperability, but active users send on average 300-400 messages per month and operators such as Turkcell can boast nearly 1 million subscribers.

The GSMA have a Personal Instant Messaging (PIM) initiative which is now 2 years old and seeks to achieve national interoperability to boost usage. John Darnbrough, Market Development Manager from the GSMA made a presentation to the conference analysing the Russian market where they are close to achieving full interoperability. We should see growth in MIM usage sometime during Q4 2008/Q1 2009 and I will be watching this closely.

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