SmarTone Telecommunications has set a modest subscriber target for its newly launched multimedia messaging service (MMS).
Chief executive Douglas Li said he expected a minimum of 10,000 customers to take up the service within the first year, or about 1 per cent of its one million subscriber base.
MMS enables users to send photos with musical features via mobile phones.
'We are targeting at least 10,000 to 20,000 subscribers in the next 12 months, but it is hard to estimate [how many we will have]. I wish I knew,' Mr Li said.
SmarTone yesterday became the third third-generation (3G) mobile operator to launch an MMS, following rivals CSL and Hutchison Telecom. It is first to provide an estimate of the number of users for the new data application service.
Mr Li said the availability and pricing of MMS-enabled handsets were the determining factors for market penetration, although he believed more and cheaper handsets would be available as time passed.