Whether it is pictures or music, there is a lot more to the future of mobile phones than talking and texting.
A Glasgow-based psychologist has predicted pictures and abstract images could one day form the basis of a new language without words.
Picture messaging, it was said, could redefine the way we communicate as more sophisticated phones come to market.
Meanwhile, a service has been launched aimed at reviving file-sharing made popular by Napster and similar sites.
French company Apeera has developed technology to enable mobile phone users to share applications and files, such as games, images and music, with friends, colleagues and even complete strangers around the world.
The technology provides a storage "cabinet" in which users can keep multimedia files.
The store is maintained by the operator but users manage their files either through an interface on their mobile handset or using the internet.
Most phones have only a small onboard memory, which limits the number of files they can hold at any one time but the new service promises infinite storage capacity.
Apeera says the service would be popular with network operators who have been searching for applications to raise consumer interest.
They have been encouraging customers to upgrade their phones to the newest models, like the Nokia 3650, which can handle colour images and polyphonic ringtones.
Apeera's chief executive Bruno Suard said: "Mobile users are notoriously fickle and operators have been struggling to find ways of attracting new customers and retaining existing ones.
"Operators are not looking for the killer application, they are searching for the killer revenue model."
Apeera said its technology could be applied to a variety of existing services and used on any phone that can use wireless access protocol (WAP).
Applications such as mobile games and files such as picture libraries and ringtones could be distributed from user to user at the push of a button.
Apeera's introduction of the new service coincides with a court in the United States blocking the sale of Napster to the German media group Bertelsmann, a move which leaves it facing liquidation.
Until last year, Napster provided software which let users upload MP3 music files from other people's computers over the internet.
It had more than 70 million users.
This meant it was possible to download almost any piece of music without having to pay a penny.
The music industry took a dim view of this.
When Madonna's single Music was leaked on to the internet months before its official release, the singer's manager Caresse Norman said: "The music was stolen. It was not intended for release for several months.
"It is still a work in progress. Ultimately, those sites that offered a download of Madonna's music are violating her rights as an artist."
Heavy metal band Metallica's lawyers accused 335,000 Napster users of illegally copying MP3s.
Law suits by the major record labels put a halt to the service and, despite trying to reinvent itself as a "legitimate" online music service, Napster remains in limbo.
It is not yet clear how file swapping using mobile phones will be allowed to develop and whether the market will be regulated.
Professor Simon Garrod, of Glasgow University, has found a less controversial way to use picture messages.
He conducted experiments which proved the old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words.
He found when two people communicated solely by drawing pictures, their graphical dialogues quickly came to resemble spoken conversation.
In time, the pictures used by each partner become simpler, more schematic or abstract and begin to converge.
The participants started to understand each other purely through the exchange of images and developed symbolic pictures, which only they understood.
Professor Garrod told the British Association Festival of Science at Leicester University:
"These results matched many of the features of normal spoken communication, including the development of specialised local dialects within closed communities.
"They indicate new communication technologies may open up new means of communication when spoken communication is difficult or impossible.
"They also might help to explain why mobile phones are becoming as popular for graphic communication as they are for spoken communication."
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