At the Sendo X launch in London on Wednesday, the company said if users were encouraged to touch up pictures, there is more chance they would send them to friends, which translates into revenues for network operators. Text messaging has proven one of the biggest earners for operators, generating more than 10 percent of average revenues per user for many. However, analysts such as Ovum predict that these revenues could disappear as users switch to cheaper forms of text messaging, such as mobile email.
Ron Schaeffer, product manager at Sendo, said personalisation could revolutionise the way consumers use MMS. "It's all about increasing revenue for the operator," he said. "We think if you can make someone look stupid in a picture, you're more likely to send it as an MMS. So the Image Editor is integrated into the photo album. You can add graphics, captions, crop the picture, and so on."
The tri-band Sendo X has been designed to go head to head with Sony Ericsson's P900 and similar offerings from Nokia and Samsung. It includes a VGA video and still digital camera with a 4X zoom, a flash and automatic red-eye reduction. The phone comes with 64MB of memory -- of which 32MB is available to users built-in -- which the company said is enough to store 1,000 high-quality pictures.
Sendo is optimistic about taking on the world's largest phone manufacturers because it claims it has already received a number of orders from operators, including Italian operator TIM. Hugh Brogan, chief executive of Sendo, said: "I wouldn't call the order from TIM an enormous order, but it's comparable with the orders the other smartphone manufacturers are getting."
Details of the Symbian-based Sendo X smart phone were first revealed last month. The plans came as a surprise because it had been less than a year since the Birmingham-based company was forced to abandon its plans for a Windows-based smartphone due to a legal dispute with Microsoft.
ZDNet UK's Rupert Goodwins contributed to this report.
Talkback
SMS is that Short Message Service or Smart Move Service Providers?
Well I would say it was the latter as I believe this was the best thing to happen to mobiles.
Why? Well I will tell you why!
As a consumer it is easy to send an sms, it's quick and most importantly it’s cheap. Oh and people didn't really care how much revenue their service provider was earning from their busy fingers.
Now the service provider, well this is where I get to my point. They have a good thing going with us Brits sending thousands of sms each day and they know it, and now they want to bleed us more with MMS.
Most of us know that there are massive set-up charges but once it's in place then they’re on to a winner. Well you would think that. I know I will not be sending MMS at it’s current price and nor will others until they drop the price!
As for adding a picture editor to the Sendo is beyond me, how can they possible believe that this will encourage people to send more MMS? Does this picture editor reduce the file size so it costs less to send? I don’t think so.
MMS has a long way to go before consumers start using it like they use SMS.
>>Ron Schaeffer, product manager at Sendo, said personalisation could revolutionise the way consumers use MMS. "It's all about increasing revenue for the operator," he said. "We think if you can make someone look stupid in a picture, you're more likely to send it as an MMS. So the Image Editor is integrated into the photo album. You can add graphics, captions, crop the picture, and so on."<<
ah...another intelligent use for technology to lead society forward!
Microsoft have lost another oportunity to get their operating system on a possible high volume market device. The Operating system that is employed in the majority of mobiles phones (as it will happen) will eventually influence choice of operating system on PCs. Users will demand and expect ease of use at cheapest price and will expect PCs to enable (keep up with) their mobile technology. Ignore the influence of mobile phone technology at your peril.