Business idea

Merrion

For anyone that is interested:

A photo printing machine (booth or wall mounted) that has a telephone number and prints any picture sent to it by MMS and deducts the cost from the sender's phone credit.

The technology is existant and very simple but I'm guessing you'd need a mobile phone operator to do the billing side.

Thoughts?

Nuttzz

I dont mean to sound flipant but what is its for? What would you use it for? (Nuttzz doesnt have an mms phone so he doesnt understand)

As for billing how about text a premium text number for an activation code for the booth. Bit like the ring tones idea?

eth0_

I can't see that being very popular, sure the quality of MMS photos is dire.

Merrion

Boots in the UK already have a similar setup except for the billing side....you put coins in the machine with them.

Nuttzz

Ahh I have re-read it (sober!). Its not a bad idea but as eth0_ says the quality is poor from MMS (so I have heard). Having said that the quality can improve very quickly and who ever has the patent on it will do ok from it i'd say

Victor

Originally posted by eth0_
I can't see that being very popular, sure the quality of MMS photos is dire.

Isn't the problem with MMS pics the screen not the actual picture quality? And when you transfer them to a computer the quality is much improved.

Merrion

I got a photo from an MMS camera and it looks fine on my desktop so I'd say a standard photo size would be good enogh...especially as the main customers would be kids and drunken hen party type people

alleepally

Is it possible to send a pic from your MMS phone via email? Is that more expensive ? If it was possible to email it, any photo place could then do it?

spongebob

It has ben done. These converged kiosks are in the UK

M

Merrion

Back to the day job so...

trap4

Click & Deliver from dotPhoto seems to be a similar idea.

~~~~~~~~~~~~
-Jim.
http://eirepreneur.blogs.com

spongebob

the original was the Finnish Coke machine vending machines.

the converged kiosks print email attachments sent by GPRS email . You pick them up in Hotmail or Yahoo and then print them . The Kiosks have ADSL . You pay for 5 mins access and the printout.

M

clearz

Originally posted by eth0_
I can't see that being very popular, sure the quality of MMS photos is dire.

The quality of MMS photos have improved greatly with 1 Megapixel versions already appearing on the market. That is good enough for a quality 9x6 print.

I think its a great idea but judging by some posts it seems to already be available.

daveg

Along similar lines - In Wallmart in the USA they have a facility where you can load your memory card from your digital camera into a camera PC. You then have several options (touch screen - very user friendly) - You can select pictures to print (downloaded to the printing machine in the photography development section) or you can burn to a CDR or you can upload to Wallmart.com to view/download/show to family etc.

I thought this was brilliant. Here we were on holiday taking approx 3,000 pictures per day (slight exaggeration) so I thought we would have to buy loads more memory. We just burnt to CDR every couple of evenings.

Merrion

Jessops in the UK have the same facility to burn photos to CDR.

eth0_

Originally posted by clearz
The quality of MMS photos have improved greatly with 1 Megapixel versions already appearing on the market. That is good enough for a quality 9x6 print.
.

Yes, but on the super expensive phones like P900's, not your entry level phones, and i'd imagine the target market for this sort of business is teenagers who are mostly going to have entry level phones with pretty crap cameras.

clearz

Im saying the speed that tehnology moves at by the time sombody implemented that business idea hem 1 Megapixel phones will probably be mass market.

Donald

Hi

We possess such a kiosk - it receives MMS or any photo format and prints on the spot. You can rent or buy the kiosks.

reply by by PM or email,

Thanks