mBCBP : what technology ?

mBCBP is developing exponentially. More than 100 millions were delivered in 2009. What explains such a development ? Convenience is not the only reason.
The answer comes from studying passenger behavior. When you leave home to take a flight, you are likely to forget many items but there is one you will turn back to take : your cell phone. Over 30% of passengers that have home printed their boarding pass cannot find it when they get to the airport. Indeed a paper is not easy to find in a computer case or a handbag. Not finding the boarding pass creates frustration and anxiety. Passengers remember this and are willing to try new means that will help them reduce the likeliness of stress.
Another reason for the development of mBCBP is the unavailability of printers at destination. It is natural to have a printer a origin (home or office). But at destination, passengers are likely to be staying in an hotel. Printing the boarding pass would require going to the business center. As a consequence most of them choose to collect their the boarding pass at the airport.
mBCBP can be delivered in 3 main formats : email, MMS, Wap push. Each of these formats has benefits and constraints.
Emails : Very easy to deliver but the boarding pass is an attachment. This requires to download and display the attachment. When the list of messages is large, finding the email can take some time and slowdown the process. Only business travelers have the option to receive emails on cell phone. This is progressively developing to the leisure travelers but penetration is still low.
MMS: offers the benefit to display the boarding pass immediately without need for download. MMS are available on most of the phones except business phones (this is changing). This is a good delivery method for the leisure travelers. But delivering MMS across countries and networks requires agreement with network operators. Protocol conflict can also block the delivery of MMS.
Wap push : This is a link in an SMS. The benefit of this technology is that all cell phones can receive SMS. So delivery is very simple. The drawback is that a data connexion is required to download the boarding pass. This is the most common way to deliver mBCBP today.
So finally how to choose ? The choice will depend on who you are targeting. Currently, 80% of passengers that request mBCBP use a blackberry device. 20% of them use an iPhone. A fraction of them other smart phones.
Emails are perfectly valid to target the business segment provided you adapt the attachment to cell phone screen (no PDF !)
Wap push suits leisure and business travelers but is less efficient than email because you need to have an active connexion at the time of display. So this is interesting only if leisure travelers are in your target.
MMS delivery is the most convenient for passengers but the technical difficulties that can arise do not make it a good option for international flights.