Vodacom CEO, Alan Knott Craig, said, “In the third quarter we plan to launch cellular phones equipped with digital cameras that will enable photos to be sent from phone to phone. This application has already taken off in Japan, where it is referred to as Sha-mail, which translates to photomail in English.” He said Vodacom plans to introduce photomail in time for the festive season at an equivalent cost to that of sending an SMS. “We expect millions of photomails to be sent over the Christmas period," he stated.

“Vodacom has taken a leadership position in offering advanced features that we believe are critical to making MMS a success, said Volker Ziegler, President of Solutions within the Information and Communication Mobile Group. “There is no doubt multimedia messaging will drive the mobile services data business for 2.5G and 3G networks”.

“Photo messaging is the key service that will drive MMS success on GPRS,” said Openwave Senior Vice President of Customer Advocacy, Allen Snyder. “While MMS delivers so much more than SMS, photo messaging makes it even easier and more fun – just point, click and send.”

Openwave has been enabling IP messaging for service providers and millions of subscribers around the world for almost a decade. Its market-proven products and experience in large-scale IP messaging systems provided the foundation for mobile operators in Japan, where millions of consumers are using mobile phones equipped with small, easy-to-use cameras. Using Openwave’s technology, operators in Japan aggressively launched photo messaging 18 months ago. Since then, over 6 million subscribers have snapped up camera phones and now send millions of photos daily.