TOKYO—J-Phone, Vodafone Group’s carrier in Japan, announced that the number of users of J-Phone’s popular mobile photo service exceeded 4 million.
J-Phone launched the service with handsets that include built-in cameras called “Shamail“—”sha” means “take a picture” in Japanese—in November 2000. Sharp, a leading vendor with strengths in LCD technology, initially developed a mobile phone with a tiny camera. Today, J-Phone is providing 11 types of Shamail mobile phones, which let users send and receive e-mails with pictures taken by the tiny cameras. About one-third of J-Phone’s 12 million subscribers use Shamail mobile handsets.
On 1 March, J-Phone launched a new video Shamail service that lets users send and receive e-mail with video clips that users take with the built-in cameras.
