Sprint thinks print with Fujifilm partnership

Sprint is trying to goose its wireless data business by letting cell phone camera subscribers get printouts of their photos at Ritz Camera, Sam's Club, Wolf Camera and other retail outlets, the carrier announced Wednesday.

Sprint believes its Sprint PCS Picture Mail is the first retail photo-printing service "to be offered directly from the cell phone" rather than requiring customers to upload pictures to a personal computer before printing.

The Sprint service is part of an overall push by all wireless operators to find new revenue sources as the amount of money each earns from voice calls slips due to vicious price wars. That effort, however, has so far met with relatively limited success. Last year, cell phone users generated $86 billion in worldwide revenues by making phone calls but just $2 billion downloading games, ring tones and other nonvoice services that carriers offer.

But photography using cell phones has emerged in the last two years as a surprisingly successful new service. Jill Aldort, a consultant with InfoTrends, predicts consumers will print a quarter of the camera phone photos that they take over the next four years.

Sprint is making the service possible by partnering with Fujifilm, which is expanding its move into the mobile phone market. The Sprint deal is just one of several major partnerships the manufacturer has with cellular carriers in addition to handset makers Nokia, NEC and others, Fujifilm said in a statement.

Kodak picture already does cellphone prints!

The latest versions of the kodak picture maker, deployed at CVS and other photo shops, allow you to upload pictures taken on a cellphone or PDA through bluetooth or infrared believe it or not!

'Course Sprint and other cellphone companies have done everything possible to force you to extra fees to retrieve the pictures off of your phone so most Sprint cameraphones don't work with the Kodak Picture Maker.

More information on the new Kodak Picture Maker with bluetooth and IR receive capabilities: http://www.kodak.com/eknec/PageQuerier.jhtml?pq-path=1311&pq-locale=en_US

I love my Nokia 6225 cameraphone that I have with Sprint though and the concept of being able to print my pictures directly from my phone only excites me if I can do it *on demand* such that if my friend were to say "Hey I really love that picture you just took with your phone" I could then say oh really? And then, after a few keystrokes on the phone, a print of the picture would be in the mail to them. If Sprint could pull that off then I think they have a winner. Otherwise people are just going to print the pictures themselves by downloading pictures off of the Sprint picturemail website they provide for their customers.