Japan's J-Phone says that the number of subscribers to its video messaging service known as Movie Sha-mail has passed the 2 million mark. J-Phone reached this milestone approximately 7 months after exceeding 1 million users in November 2002 and 1 year and 3 months after first introducing the service in March 2002.
In June 2001, J-Phone officially began promoting its picture messaging service called Sha-mail and since then many have embraced the service to enhance their communications. Responding to the needs of customers wishing to send video clips in addition to static pictures, J-Phone then took the next step by introducing Movie Sha-mail. With both Sha-mail and Movie Sha-mail, users now have access to greatly enhanced methods of expression not possible with simple text messaging. Like Sha-mail, Movie Sha-mail's success can be partly attributed to its ease-of-use. With a built-in mobile camera, a user can take a short video of up to 5 seconds with audio, attach the video to an e-mail called a "Super Mail" and then send it off. Receivers of the e-mail can then instantly open the file for playback.
Presently eight Movie Sha-mail-enabled handsets are available in the J-Phone handset lineup. In May, J-Phone introduced the world's first handset with an embedded megapixel CCD mobile camera, the J-SH53 by Sharp, which can send Movie Sha-mails of up to 10 seconds and is compatible with the MPEG-4 format.
On June 18, J-Phone registered over 10 million Sha-mail users, which includes Movie Sha-mail users, and as of June 24 had a total of 1.006 Sha-mail subscribers in total."
Posted to the site on 26th June 2003
Posted to: www.cellular-news.com/story/9140.php