Remember the glory days of WAP, or at least the promise of glory? One of the big issues with WAP when it rolled out in 1999 was how to get content from normal Internet sites displayed using the WAP protocol onto wireless handsets. A new industry was born around that issue.

The technology was transcoding of content so that HTML content could appear on WAP handsets. Flash-forward six years and both WAP and transcoding continue to exist. Both have changed – WAP has become one of the technologies under the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) umbrella. And transcoding has become part of the future as well as the past.

Future Is Bright Transcoding has now entered the world of MMS and appears to have a bright future because of the vast number of different handsets being sold, especially cameraphones. Without some kind of technical translation, images sent from one phone could be too small, too big or cropped when they are viewed on another phone.

Chris Ambrosio, wireless analyst with Strategy Analytics, says there are a multitude of devices with different displays, frame rates, resolutions and interfaces. Even though an image is sent in a GIF or JPEG format via MMS, it doesn't mean it will be formatted correctly by the MMS server for proper viewing on another device, he says. That's why software for transcoding, now more often called media adaptation, needs to be used.

One of the leaders in this MMS transcoding is Adamind, a Milpitas, Calif., company created last September out of the labs and business units of Emblaze Ltd. and Philips Electronics. Adamind, which went through an IPO on the London Stock Exchange last month, combined the media adaptation business units from its two parents. Philips and Emblaze still own controlling interest.

Adamind, through its relationships with infrastructure vendors and multimedia providers, has its products in use on 90 networks globally, according to CEO Shailendra Jain. Its partners include MMSC vendors LogicaCMG and Openwave Systems, as well as consultant and systems integrator Accenture.

Jain estimates that Adamind has a 40-percent market share in the burgeoning media transcoding field. The runner-up is Mobixell Networks, a venture-backed company based outside Boston that has about 25 percent of the deployments. Other companies involved in the area include LightSurf, Nokia, SenseStream and VoiceAge Networks.

Among Mobixell's financial backers are MMSC vendor Comverse Technologies, the investment arm of Siemens Mobile, and streaming media technology company Optibase. Mobixell recently deployed its solution, which it calls a Rich Media Service Center (RMSC), with HP for Vodafone Netherlands.

Jain says MMS transcoding solves the technical issues involved in the thorny question of MMS interoperability, although the mobile operators themselves still have to set up the business agreements necessary to let a subscriber on one network to send MMS messages directly to a subscriber on another network.

Adamind last week announced the fifth generation of its MediaSpire rich media adaptation software. The software operates on an operator's MMS server to provide real-time media content adaptation. Version 5.0 provides accelerated performance, statistics and reporting tools, supports additional media forms and has profiles and rules for more than 130 MMS devices.

Current MMS applications that Adamind supports include images, ringtones and video/audio combinations. Other applications such as instant messaging, Web or WAP content, image enhancement, digital rights management support, anti-spam and content branding are also on the company's roadmap.

New Revenue OPPS Jain says media adaptation will open up new worlds of revenue-generating opportunities for carriers that are beyond what is currently considered MMS. Adamind's revenues in 2004 were $3 million, but analysts have forecast that will grow to $6.7 million in 2005.

Analyst Ambrosio says as 3G networks gain a wider footprint and user-base globally, which he expects will be 2006 and 2007, the demand for media content adaptation will increase because of interoperability issues.

Mobixell Networks, in its own analysis of the market, said one-fifth of all MMS messages likely will encounter interoperability problems even if carrier agreements are hammered out. If MMS becomes a $42.5 billion market this year, as Juniper Research has forecast, interoperability is not a nickels-and-dimes issue.

Mobixell says its own study shows up to $6 billion in revenue could be lost because of interoperability problems.

Samuel Kent, marketing vice president for Mobixell, said in a statement that if an MMS is not delivered successfully the carrier not only loses the revenue but also fails to pay off infrastructure investments more quickly and has to deal with customer dissatisfaction.

And, as Adamind's Jain says, the problem will only get worse as more and more MMS-enabled phones are sold and more applications become available.