Picture this: you're at the World Cup match in Tokyo, watching Ireland play England. At the critical moment, you hold up your mobile phone, take a picture and send it instantly to your less-fortunate friend sitting in an office in Dublin, along with the sound of thousands of screaming fans.
Mobile phone manufacturers and operators have been making promises like this for years, followed by consumer disappointment. But mobile phone powerhouse Nokia this week unveiled a new mobile handset, the 7650, which seems to deliver and could help the Finnish firm regain market share lost this quarter.
Chairman and chief executive Mr Jorma Ollila unveiled and demonstrated the device in a lavish press event in Barcelona. The phone features a built-in digital camera and a large colour screen, incorporating a numeric keypad that slides out from the main body of the phone. A phone user could use the large screen as a viewfinder, snap the picture, add audio and text, and send the whole package in much the same way as text message is sent today.
"Multimedia messaging is a big step toward fulfilling the promises of advanced networks like 3G," said Mr Gavin Barrett , Nokia business development manager for Ireland. "It's a natural extension of text messaging and a logical step toward more advanced services in the future."
The company is taking a risk that consumers will fall in love with the idea of sending multimedia messages (MMS), as a first step toward the GPRS and 3G services that would include video. By the end of 2002, Nokia predicts half of all its handsets sold will have the digital camera. The new handsets are expected to be available in the Republic by the second quarter of 2002, and will retail for €560
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