The invention allows a portion of a multimedia message, usually the beginning part of the message to be delivered to and stored on a mobile terminal beforehand. When a user wants to view the message, the portion of the message stored locally will be played back immediately, while at the same time a user agent residing in the mobile terminal will contact a media server for the remaining contents using the streaming technology. This would give the user an impression that the whole message is stored locally since there is nearly no noticeable delay in the playback, thus providing a much better user experience. The partial contents down-loaded can be a portion of the whole multimedia message, or an muntrelated rich-media message provided by a third party as an advertisement. In this way, the usage of the local storage space on the mobile terminal will be much more efficient.