J-Phone Claims 10 Million Camera Phone Users

Japan's J-Phone says that as of June 18, 2003, Sha-mail picture messaging enabled handsets exceeded the 10 million mark. Since topping 9 million in March 2003, Sha-mail subscribers increased by 1 million in approximately three months, bringing the number of Sha-mail users to approximately 70% of J-Phone's total subscriber base. After introducing in November 2000 its first camera-equipped mobile handset, the J-SH04 by Sharp, J-Phone has reached the milestone of 10 million Sha-mail users in approximately two years and seven months.

With the launch of its mobile packet data service in March 2002, J-Phone marked another landmark in mobile communications by launching Movie Sha-mail, a service which enables users to send and receive e-mails with attachments containing audio/video messages of up to five seconds in length, thereby offering expanded possibilities for visual expression. With its 7 Movie Sha-mail handsets, J-Phone now has 1.97 million Movie Sha-mail subscribers, approximately 14% of its customer base.

In August 2002, J-Phone launched the world's first handset capable of reading bar codes (JAN Codes/QR Codes) by offering the J-SH09 by Sharp, thereby opening up new possibilities for mobile camera usage. Currently J-Phone offers five handsets that are capable of reading bar codes and has over 1.6 million subscribers that can use the function. Picture messaging is rapidly expanding throughout the rest of the world as well. On October 2002 in Europe, Vodafone launched Vodafone live!, an easy to use consumer service bringing customers a world of colour, sound and pictures, and registered over 1 million users at the end of March 2003."

Posted to the site on 19th June 2003