J-Phone (Vodafone Japan) hits 2 million subscribers of movie messaging service

J-PHONE Co., Vodafone presence in Japan (and soon to be rebranded as Vodafone) announced the number of subscribers to its video messaging service known as Movie Sha-mail passed the 2 million mark.

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.