To fuel sales, carriers have cut camera phone prices sharply since the first model was introduced by Sprint in late 2002 with a list price of US$400. Still, compared with the entry-level, camera-less phones that service providers sell for little or nothing, camera phones generally cost US$100 and up with rebates and a two-year contract.
While the photos taken on a camera phone can also be sent to a regular e-mail address on a computer, many users are drawn by the novelty of sharing photos with other cellular shutterbugs, sending pictures among their handsets. Since subscribers generally pay by the volume of messages sent or received -- Sprint offers unlimited service as part of a monthly Web package -- that's the type of usage wireless companies are anxious to promote.
However, to share picture messages successfully with other cellphone users, those people must all be signed up with the same wireless service. Rival carriers have not reached any deals to interconnect their services.
Until the carriers come to terms on how to pay one another for delivering this new form of communication, picture messaging will remain less like e-mail, and more like instant messaging, where users of services from AOL, Yahoo! and MSN still cannot directly chat.
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