By simplifying the process of sending photos from the phone to the web and using GPRS rather than MMS, Cognima Snap could stimulate usage of camera phones. The technology allows users to upload images or video clips on the press of a single button.

Because of MMS file size limitations, the quality of pictures posted to web blogs or albums may shrink to 30k as opposed to the 300k in the original.

Cognima Snap gets round this by using GPRS, making also the operation swifter and more reliable. From the operators point of view, lower cost of GPRS data rates could be counterbalanced by increased usage.

A previous consumer trial revealed that Cognima Snap increased the number of photos uploaded from camera-phones to online photo albums by 14 fold.

Users also visited the online photo album more than twice as often and made more use of the album services, including sending pictures from the album to other phones. Two weeks into the trial over 70% of Cognima Snap users were still actively using the service, compared to only 18% of the participants using standard MMS to upload their photos.

From 160 Characters.