March 17, 2004
Land-line phones imitate cameraphones
The first ever home phone with fixed-line Multimedia Messaging Service was launched today by Siemens Mobile, accroding to Mobilemag.
"The SL740 combines a high-resolution colour display and an integrated digital camera. Send a picture of baby's first smile to Dad's mobile phone when he is away from home, to make sure he doesn't miss out. Or go further and record baby's first giggle and send a sound clip with the image and if you really want to get your excitement across, the 640 character SMS feature might just be the answer."
With fixed-line phones losing market share, it looks like handset manufacturers are waking up and integrating some new features to entice consumers. Some recent examples: Just last month, a rringtone service was launched for land-line phones in Germany and a few days ago, Australian Telstra's introduced Talking Text Messaging to fixed phone lines.
And interesting, a related article last November, on how European operators are reinventing home phones to compete with mobiles.
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