Mobile phone operator O2 has officially launched its media messaging service (MMS) and new camera phones capable of taking and sending pictures and audio through the MMS service.

The company, which two weeks ago said it would not offer the service until mid-month because it was ironing out small glitches, actually introduced the service and had its first handsets in shops on November 4th.

Vodafone also has its MMS service in operation.

MMS - which works with the latest colour-screen camera phones - enables phone users to send one another pictures and sound recordings. European operators hope the service will kickstart the moribund mobile market.

Although the European handset market is considered to be close to saturation, the industry is betting that customers will want to trade up to MMS-enabled handsets and services. O2 Ireland managing director Ms Danuta Gray said she expected the first adopters of the handsets and services to be "young professionals". She also said the company had kept the cost of sending a message as low as possible to encourage people to use MMS as spontaneously as they use text (SMS) messages.

An MMS message will cost 50 cents to send, regardless of the size or resolution of the file. Text messages cost around 10 cents to send.

Until January, O2 hopes to encourage the adoption of the service by offering 20 free monthly messages to post-paid customers, and a daily "happy hour" between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. for pre-paid customers to send free messages.

However, Vodafone customers and O2 customers cannot send MMS messages to each other across the two networks, as interconnect agreements have yet to be worked out between the operators.

O2 launched a set of other services, including games that can be downloaded onto new handsets that incorporate Java technology, and a location-based service that gives people information on services in the vicinity of their phone.