TOKYO and LONDON-Vodafone Group plc and J-Phone Co. Ltd. both announced strong subscriber numbers for their respective multimedia messaging services.
Vodafone said it has met its target of 1 million Vodafone Live! customers by end-March. The global operator said 375,000 Live! users are in Germany, 220,000 are in the United Kingdom and 190,000 are in Italy, with an additional 420,000 customers in those markets owning multimedia messaging service-capable devices.
The Vodafone service, which combines picture messaging, polyphonic ring tones and color games with camera phones, is available in 10 countries, with Vodafone’s subsidiaries in Egypt, Australia and New Zealand set to begin the services soon.
The company launched Live! five months ago.
J-Phone, Vodafone’s Japanese subsidiary, said the number of its subscribers with picture messaging-enabled handsets topped 9 million as of March 25. That makes the number of Sha-Mail users, the brand name for J-Phone’s picture messaging service, about 65 percent of its total subscriber base of 13 million.
J-Phone launched the service in June 2001, and the operator offers 24 different Sha-Mail handsets, six of which are video-enabled. The operator launched video messaging services in March 2002.
