Wireless Camera Phones Extensively Used Business

The combined number of subscriptions of mobile phone handsets with a built-in camera from J-Phone Group, KDDI Corp., and NTT DoCoMo, Inc. topped 10 million as of October 2002.

J-Phone, followed by KDDI and NTT DoCoMo this year, first introduced mobile phones equipped with a camera to the market. Corporate users, interested in the recent boom, started to use the service to perform their daily tasks. Such companies are engaged in business fields such as medical services, construction and manufacturing. They started to use mobile phone devices equipped with a sensor with a resolution of 100,000 to 300,000 pixels. Improvements in functions of a camera have helped spread the popularity.

However, such phones still have some problems, including the pixel level, the size of a display and the durability. Many companies agree that a camera mobile phone is not a versatile tool. They say such phones are effective if companies use them for specific purposes, and try to take advantage of their higher portability and operability, as well as lower cost related to introduction.

Sending Medical Images to Doctors in Case of Emergency

The cranial nerve surgery department of Asahi University's Murakami Memorial Hospital in Gifu, Gifu Prefecture, introduced in December 2000 J-Phone's "Sha-Mail" service to contact doctors in case of an emergency.

Whenever an emergency arises while medical specialists are away from the hospital, a nurse or a doctor on duty takes an MRI or CT image with a camera-equipped mobile phone, attaches the image to e-mail and transmits it to a medical specialist (See photo).

The doctor then interprets the symptom shown on the attached photo and gives instructions to the nurse or the doctor on duty on how to take first-aid measures and prepare for an operation. This enables him or her to start medical treatment as soon as he or she gets to the hospital.

Conventionally, in case of emergency, a doctor on duty has interpreted an MRI or CT image and told his or her interpretations to a medical specialist on the phone, but was unable to communicate details orally. With use of a built-in camera mobile phone, however, the doctor can make interpretations immediately by observing the transmitted image. Unlike an e-mail system for a personal computer, he or she can receive such imaging anywhere, anytime, without having to worry about potential illegal accesses from unknown users. A camera phone is easy to use, and offers stricter security at lower cost.

Initially, those who work for the hospital were concerned about the low image quality and the effect of electromagnetic waves on medical devices. However, they found out that the resolution of the display is about 120 x 120 pixels, about one fourth of a real CT image. Thus, they claim they can perceive almost all parts of disease on a camera phone that uses 65,526 or more colors for its display. They also have solved a problem relating to electromagnetic waves by strictly complying with rules, including transmission of Sha-Mail by the window.

Murakami Memorial Hospital currently has three medical specialists working at the hospital and carrying such a mobile phone terminal with a built-in camera, and allows two other hospitals with no cranial nerve surgery specialist to use it. The hospital says it may distribute such phones to a dermatology department as well in the future, when such phones will have a larger display screen, more pixels and higher-speed communications.

Salespeople Can Send Design Images on the Road

Some companies adopted a mobile phone handset equipped with a built-in camera to support their sales activities. Tokai Senko KK, a manufacturer specializing in dyeing and finishing, introduced in February 2002 a system linking sales and a plant that uses the J-Phone group's "Sha-Mail" service. The new system enables salespersons who are not very familiar with dyeing skills to get back to customers, with a scheduled delivery date and a quotation a few days earlier than before, since they can take pictures of design samples presented by their customer on the spot and send the image to a dyeing engineer at the plant.

The system had been developed jointly with NEC Corp. The dyer had invested some 3 million yen in the development of the system. Design samples sent by salespersons are stored on a server for an image database, which can be viewed on a mobile phone browser. When a customer asks a salesperson to produce the same design as the one produced a year before, the salesperson can search the requested design from the database for confirmation, without any mistakes resulting from miscommunication.

Although Tokai Senko says it is more dissatisfied with the level of color reproducibility than the number of pixels, at the same time it understands that colors cannot be exactly reproduced in digital images. Just being able to roughly grasp images immediately can be very helpful, the company says.

Increased use of camera-installed mobile phones in businesses is something that was unexpected to a marketing officer at NTT DoCoMo. He commented that the company is surprised by the strong corporate demand for such image services, because the firm initially targeted consumers as potential users. Providers of car insurance products, pharmaceuticals makers and railroad companies are currently considering introducing the mobile imaging service, the marketing officer said.

KDDI and J-Phone are introducing products and services for corporate users, including image management software and servers as well as ASP services linked with duty management. KDDI expects that an increasing number of corporate users will adopt the service some time between late in the current fiscal year and early next fiscal year.

Are Videophones Really Usable?

NTT DoCoMo's third-generation mobile phone service, "FOMA," is at work in business. FOMA models can be used as a videophone as well as a camera. NTT DoCoMo has been making efforts to promote such videophone capability for companies to perform daily corporate tasks. But so far there have been limited applicable areas and higher rates.

For example, in a joint experiment with NTT DoCoMo, Takenaka Corp., a major construction company in Japan, used FOMA phones at its construction sites during October 2001, when commercial services of FOMA phones were launched, and April 2002. After the experiment, workers at such sites concluded there is no point in talking on a phone while watching the other party's face at building sites. The other ways to use a videophone, in which workers downloaded images taken by video cameras set up at building sites via packet communications every two seconds using FOMA phone's Java capability, was favorably received. However, such downloading can be done with regular mobile phone handsets, and it does not have to be FOMA phones.

On the other hand, there are companies that give a very high mark to FOMA phones.

Taisei Corp. distributed 17 FOMA phones to all chiefs and supervisors working at a construction site of the headquarters of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. in Shinagawa, Tokyo, by February 2002.

Chiefs use FOMA phones to confirm images on the phone when painting on walls and nailing bolts are different from what is shown on design drawings, and they are far away from the building site. They are able to give appropriate instructions to employees on the video phone. In many smaller-scale constructions, a relatively inexperienced employee alone has to supervise the entire site, and the video phone can be very effective, because such an inexperienced worker can call on his boss for advice using the real-time images of pin-pointed places and angles of the objects they want to share. (photo left: a cite manager taking a photo of the part that needs be checked by others; photo right: the transmitted photo is projected into a large monitor).

A Taisei spokesperson said communications charges do not cause trouble, because construction workers use FOMA phones only when trouble arises. The communication charges are not so different from those of non-FOMA phones, the spokesperson added. When the construction person hopes to listen to reporting from chiefs and workers in charge of preparing design drawings, they use NTT East's video phone service called Moppet in combination with a PC and a large display screen.

The aforementioned Murakami Memorial Hospital's cranial nerve surgery department and Tokai Senko also are seeking ways to take advantage of a video phone capability for emerging transportation and business negotiations related to sales. However, it seems that it will take some more time to actually capitalize on such video phone capability to perform daily operations because of the many technical issues, although such usage does have some advantages.