System and method for providing multimedia electronic mail service in a portable terminal

1. A system for providing an E-mail service through a portable terminal with a wireless Internet access function, comprising:

a multimedia server for receiving a multimedia E-mail message including multimedia data and E-mail data to be transmitted to the portable terminal, and after receiving the E-mail message, removing the multimedia data from the E-mail message, storing the multimedia data in an internal local memory, and adding uniform resource locator (URL) information of a server on which multimedia data is stored as a predetermined format string to the E-mail message;

an E-mail server for receiving the E-mail message from the multimedia server and notifying the receiving portable terminal of the arrival of the E-mail message; and the portable terminal for receiving the E-mail message from the E-mail server, parsing the E-mail message, and displaying the E-mail message with multimedia link information if the predetermined format string is confirmed, wherein an E-mail recipient can access data stored in a VOD server by selecting the multimedia link information from within an opened E-mail.

2. The system of claim 1 , wherein upon request for the multimedia data stored in the multimedia server, the multimedia data is transmitted in a streaming file format and if a user of the portable terminal selects a multimedia service, the portable terminal is connected to the multimedia server and then to a multimedia URL, and receives, reproduces, and outputs the multimedia data.

3. The system of claim 2 , wherein the multimedia server is a VOD server.

4. A method of providing an E-mail service through a portable terminal with a wireless Internet access function in a system having a multimedia server and an E-mail server connected to the Internet, comprising the steps of:

receiving a multimedia E-mail message including multimedia data and E-mail data to be transmitted to the portable terminal, and after receiving the E-mail message, removing the multimedia data from the E-mail message, storing the multimedia data in an internal local memory, adding uniform resource locator (URL) information of a server on which multimedia data is stored as a predetermined format string to the E-mail message, and transmitting the E-mail message to the E-mail server in the multimedia server;

receiving the E-mail message from the multimedia server and notifying the receiving portable terminal of arrival of the E-mail message in the E-mail server; and

receiving the E-mail message from the E-mail server, parsing the E-mail message, and displaying the E-mail message with multimedia link information if the predetermined format string is confirmed in the portable terminal, wherein an E-mail recipient can access data stored in a VOD server by selecting the multimedia link information from within an opened E-mail.

5. The method of claim 4 , further comprising the steps of:

transmitting the multimedia data in a streaming file format upon requesting the multimedia data stored in the multimedia server; and

connecting the portable terminal to the multimedia server and then to a multimedia URL, and receiving, reproducing, and outputting the multimedia data in the portable terminal if a user of the portable terminal selects a multimedia service.

6. The method of claim 5 , wherein the multimedia server is a VOD server.

7. A method of providing an E-mail service in a portable terminal with a wireless Internet access function, comprising the steps of:

receiving an E-mail message from a multimedia server if arrival of the E-mail is notified and an E-mail function is invoked;

determining whether the received E-mail message contains link information including a predetermined format string; and

displaying the E-mail message with multimedia link information including uniform resource locator (URL) information of server on which multimedia data is stored, if it is determined that the link information includes the predetermined format string, wherein an E-mail recipient can access data stored in a VOD server by selecting the multimedia link information from within an opened E-mail.

8. The method of claim 7 , further comprising the step of connecting to the multimedia server and then to a multimedia URL, and receiving, reproducing, and outputting multimedia data in a streaming file format if a user of the portable terminal selects a multimedia service.

9. The method of claim 8 , wherein the multimedia server is a VOD server.