What is Enhanced Messaging Service?

Enhanced Messaging Service (EMS) is a cross-industry collaboration between leading technology and telecommunication companies. It is an application-level extension to Short Message Service (SMS) services for cellular phones available on GSM, TDMA and CDMA networks. EMS is an intermediate technology, between SMS and MMS, providing some of the features of MMS. EMS is a technology that is designed to work within existing telecom networks, but may ultimately be made obsolete by MMS. An EMS enabled mobile phone can send and receive messages that have special text formatting, animations, pictures, icons, sound effects and special ring tones. EMS messages that are sent to devices that do not support it will be displayed as SMS messages, though they may be unreadable due to the presence of additional data that cannot be rendered by the device. EMS was not much of a success due to interoperability issues.

(source: Wikipedia)