A new application from dotPhoto aims to help carriers gain more revenue from their camera-phone toting subscribers while allowing those subscribers to more easily access the photos they snap on those phones.

DotPhoto has introduced pictavision for Webshots — a new version of pictavision, which is currently deployed on more than 20 wireless carriers worldwide. The idea is that users of the new app can treat their camera phone photos much like they would traditional digital camera photos.

Photos can be uploaded alone or in batches to the Webshots Web site, where users can store, share, post on blogs or process into traditional prints and other merchandise. Subscribers are then allowed full mobile access to Webshots' offerings directly through their mobile phones.

Jiren Parikh, general manager of wireless for dotPhoto, said the application launched in May and will be available on BREW and Java camera phones from wireless carriers, including Verizon — which he says will launch the application on 90% of its handsets — Alltel, U.S. Cellular, Cricket Wireless and Metro PCS in North America, plus major carriers in Latin America, in India on Tata Telesystems and other markets to follow. Subscribers will pay $3.99 per month for the service in North America, with prices varying in other countries.

“Pictavision itself was the first single-use app — you open up the app, you take a picture, you press one more button and add a voice annotation to it,” Parikh said. “Another button, it automatically saves it to your gallery or your online album, and one more button, and it will automatically create an account for you.” He said more photo-sharing companies are releasing applications on a wireless application protocol platform, which is more complicated for the user.

Parikh said the typical demographic for most photo-sharing and managing programs has been teens to 30-year-olds, but for pictavision and dotPhoto in general, demographics have been aimed at an older age group.

“BREW obviously has a fairly sophisticated testing infrastructure in place when we submit apps, so when somebody launches an app like this, it's a great user experience,” he said. “We tend to think that's probably the reason why we have a higher age group on our BREW apps.”

Parikh said pictavision for Webshots is the first product launch under the company's reorganization, and a portfolio of various pictavision apps are still to come this year, including games, blogging and a postcard app, as well as the launch of a new version of pictavision itself.