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Vodafone Ireland to launch camera phones
Tuesday, August 06 2002
by Ciaran Buckley


Vodafone will begin selling mobile phones with embedded digital cameras in
Ireland this autumn, following a deal between its parent company and Sharp.

According to several reports, UK-based Vodafone Group has signed a deal with
Japanese electronics manufacturer Sharp that will see the mobile operator launch
Sharp's second-generation camera phones in the UK by Christmas 2002. According to
the Japanese news service Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Sharp has already closed a deal
to supply 1 million camera phones to Vodafone, although Sharp has only confirmed
that it is in talks with the company.



Moreover, these new phones, along with similar models made by Nokia and Sony
Ericsson, will become available to Irish consumers this autumn, explained Joan
Keating, Vodafone Ireland's head of communications. 



Sharp, which is Japan's third-largest mobile handset maker, was one of the first
companies to bring camera phones to market, and recently it began shipping
second-generation products with much-improved picture quality.



Meanwhile, Sony Ericsson has announced its T68i camera phone and Nokia has
announced its 7610 and 7650 camera phones, and these are to be released onto the
Irish market in the autumn as well. However, the new Sharp camera phones are
understood to provide better picture quality than the camera phones provided by
other handset manufacturers. In fact, the Sharp camera phones are credited with
increasing the market share of Vodafone subsidiary J-Phone in Japan. J-Phone has
taken market share from the market leader, NTT DoCoMo, whose market share has
slipped from 66 percent down to 60 percent. 



Although consumers will most likely find the ability to send a picture over their
mobile a curiosity at first, Europe's mobile operators are hoping the service
will become far more addictive as it becomes incorporated with MMS (multimedia
messaging services). Indeed, MMS and GPRS, which together let users send
colourful and animated messages, are the areas on which operators are pinning
hopes for a sustained drive in data service revenues. 



"We expect to start providing an MMS service in Ireland in the autumn," said
Keating. "The delay isn't due to the Vodafone network but to the fact that
handsets aren't yet available."



Nonetheless, cost is one potential barrier to the uptake of MMS in Europe, with
several operators talking about charging at least EUR1 per message sent, which
means that MMS will be an expensive way to distribute digital photographs. The
handsets are also expensive, and the Nokia 7650 camera phone could cost as much
as EUR500. 



In the medium term, however, camera phones are expected to replace digital
cameras. According to a recent report by Strategy Analytics entitled "Strategic
Perspectives on Cellular Camera Phones," 16 million camera phones will be sold
worldwide in 2002, and the report predicts that this figure will grow to 147
million in 2007. By comparison, 22 million digital cameras will be sold worldwide
in 2002, but their slower growth rate of 34 percent will result in only 95
million sales in 2007.



The report predicted that once the picture quality of  camera phones reached a
par with the picture quality of digital cameras, only professional photographers
and enthusiasts will continue to use dedicated digital cameras.