Yahoo, Sprint team up for mobile photo service

Sprint on Monday announced a new service designed to let its PCS Vision subscribers access their personal Yahoo photo albums from their cell phone handsets.

With the new Java-based service, PCS Vision phone users will be able to access Yahoo Photos accounts to look at saved pictures and create screensavers on their handsets. In addition, users can save photos directly on their phones and create personalized albums that can be accessed without connecting to the Internet. The service will cost $2.99 a month.

Using cell phones to take, store and exchange photos is becoming popular among customers. Sales of camera phones are expected to jump dramatically over the next few years, as leading phones makers such as Nokia and Motorola unveil affordable models of such phones.

Yahoo said the photo service is its first move into downloadable client applications. It builds on an existing partnership with Sprint that gives PCS Vision subscribers access to news, yellow pages and messenger services through Yahoo. There were 2.7 million subscribers of PCS Vision at the end of the third quarter of 2003, the companies said.