Africa, the Middle East, South America and other developing countries will lead market growth in messaging this year – with innovation a key requirement. That’s the opinion of Oscar Rodriguez, CEO at Movius Interative Corporation, one of the world’s leading names in messaging, collaboration and mobile media.

Mr Rodriguez was speaking at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where just a few hours earlier Movius had unveiled three unique new applications and revealed that despite the financial challenges of 2008 it had signed up more than 40 new customers across the world and not lost a single one.

“The developing countries are looking to get communication in all its forms to many more people than they can serve at present. Voice messaging is one of the key tools they have -  but they are looking for innovation – they are looking for partners who understand their situation, their needs and priorities and can work with them to develop solutions that are right for their part of the world,” he said.

“By showing you can meet these requirements, and that you are committed to supporting them long term, I believe there is great market potential in these territories and at Movius we are already making great progress”.

Typical of Mr Rodriguez’s call for innovation is Movius’s own new Community Messaging Service (CMS) which is on display in Barcelona. While the most advanced markets now show wireless telephony penetration exceeding 100%, there are literally billions of people on the planet who do not own a phone and – crucially – cannot afford to own one either. CMS allows callers, who previously would have been without phones and therefore unreachable, to receive and send voice messages.

“The benefits of CMS are enormous for all concerned,” said Mr Rodriguez.

“Millions of people can improve the quality of their lives by drastically improving their communications while, for operators, there is the opportunity to increase revenues, promote brand awareness and community goodwill and also to easily deploy and integrate the service into their existing network”.

The Movius view on developing markets came as the company unveiled for the first time in Europe the world’s first fully automated “Presence” solution – with applications including the ability to switch between mobile and fixed line handsets while on the same call and hands free email – where emails can be sent to your device and played to you. Automated Presence means people calling you need just one number – the system does the rest.

Another new application showing for the first time here is MessageMe Plus – a radical new development suitable for 90% of mobile phones in the market today – those with speech and SMS capability only. MessageMe Plus creates an SMS alert when a voice mail has been left and the user is also notified of the incoming caller’s number and an option to retrieve the message with just one click. With phones with video messaging capability, MessageMe Plus pushes the message to the phone and the operator can provide a video overlay or advertisement while the message is playing.

And the arrival of Visual Voice Mail (VVM) heralds another breakthrough for Smartphone users. With VVM, users can see their messages and choose which ones they want to listen to. There are priority options and even a meter to tell the person how long the message will take.