was a 2G mailing and picture messaging service launched by J-Phone (now Softbank) in 2000 that allowed users to take a photo with their mobile phone and send it to another user on the service as an email attachment.
History
Sha-Mail development was led by Keiji Takao, who previously worked for Mazda. Takao came up with the idea on a sight-seeing trip to Hakone with his parents, where he saw a woman on a cable car using her mobile phone, apparently struggling to operate the device and unable to send a photo of the view. Takao also reportedly took inspiration from a survey he had read about adolescent girls keeping disposable cameras alongside their phones in their purse. J-Phone, meanwhile, was under pressure from competitors KDDI, which had a faster network, and NTT Docomo, which was preparing to move to 3G, and the company believed it could differentiate itself by focusing on email.
The service was quite successful on the market, particularly with young people. J-Phone had sold around 3 million handsets with Sha-Mail enabled by January 2022. with around 5 million users using Movie Sha-Mail. In 2002 Vodafone, which had by that point acquired J-Phone, launched Vodafone live! as a global service. By December 2002, the European launch of Vodafone live! brought in more than 380,000 users. Sha-Mail's popularity also spawned tie-ins such as a magazine called "J-Phone Sha-mail Hearts"
In November 2002, Japan's fair trade commission raided Vodafone's headquarters upon an accusation that the company had prevented retailers from lowering the cost of Sha-Mail enabled handsets upon launch.
Though Vodafone planned to make Sha-Mail a centerpiece of its 3G service, Thus the now-obsolete Sha-Mail never upgraded to 3G, effectively ending Sha-Mail once support for 2G networks ceased.
The word Japanese word shamēru, often abbreviated to shame (), now commonly refers to any text message with an image attached.