Alltel Wireless Preps Photo Sharing and Synchronization Feature

Picture this: Alltel Wireless is prepping a photo sharing and synchronization feature that will let customers view PC and Web photo collections on mobile phones, send camera phone pictures automatically to a PC and the Web, and to share PC and Web photos from anywhere.

The innovative effort, which is designed to free pictures trapped on camera phones for other uses, is part of a larger trend by wireless and wireline operators in North America to drive sales and build customer loyalty by letting them share assets that are valuable to them – photographs.

Telco TV deployers, such as Canadian operator MTS Allstream with its photos on demand offering (see story) are looking to differentiate there service by adding photo sharing and storage options to their services, while wireless operators are moving to unlock the value of pictures taken on a fast-growing number of customer camera phones. In both cases, sharing further leverages the power of mobile devices and the bandwidth of telcos’ high-speed data networks.

Alltel and partner Sharpcast Inc. want to eliminate what they describe as the every-day hassles of manual uploading, tedious sharing processes, forgotten backups and sync cables. Sharpcast automatically backs up photo collections online, organizes them into Web albums and keeps the collection constantly up to date across all of a person's mobile phones, PCs and the Web.

The feature harnesses a growing base of phones that have external memory storage according to William Ho, senior analyst for wireless services at Current Analysis.

“Today's converged music and smartphones that also sport cameras have now the outlet of external memory storage,” said Ho. “The good news here is that this storage can be a way to store music, pictures or videos and is a method to get media off the device unlike the old days. “

Alltel hopes to unlock the value of photo sharing for consumer and business applications.

"Whether you need to quickly send photos of a real estate property to your office, or you're a busy parent wanting to share a precious memory, Sharpcast Photos will allow Alltel customers to get the most out of the robust capabilities of their powerful mobile devices," said Wade McGill, senior vice president of product management at Alltel Wireless.

Wireless industry analysts see promise for the Alltel offering even though other uploading options are available now. However, a gating factor to mass adoption of the feature is the breadth of phones that can use it

“The value that Sharpcast brings is more the synchronization piece to a users' PC and the Web album and smartphone without having to physically take out the external memory,” said Ho. “It's a natural for Alltel smartphone customers are already data plan users who can take advantage of this. But for now, it appears to be niched to Windows Smartphones.”

Sharpcast Photos will be available on most new Windows Mobile smartphones from Alltel, including the new Palm Treo 700wx and the UTStarcom PPC6700. Windows Mobile phone owners can download the application and sign up for their free Sharpcast Photos account at www.sharpcast.com/Alltel. Customers can sign up to trial the service with up to 5GB of free storage or may choose to upgrade with a monthly subscription.

With the new Sharpcast mobile edition client, photos taken on a phone are instantaneously sent to the Web and to the user's desktop PC. Likewise, the duo claims, photos on the user's desktop PC and in their online albums are automatically visible on their mobile phone, without having to rely on a mobile web browser. The organization of the albums is kept intact on the phone and photos stream instantaneously to the phone as they are viewed.

"Alltel shares our vision of a seamlessly unified view of your photos across your phone, desktop PC and the Web," said Gibu Thomas, CEO of Sharpcast. "Sharpcast Photos eliminates the problem of camera phone pictures being trapped in the phone. It's an important strategic compliment to Alltel's high-speed data network and a great new way for customers to take advantage of the speed and power of their mobile phones."

Founded less than three years ago, Sharpcast of Palo Alto, Calif., has developed APIs and application enablers to support the sharing and transmission of pictures across network types, be they wireless or wireless.

Alltel Wireless www.alltel.com  

Sharpcast Inc. www.sharpcast.com

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