On Monday, Nokia announced that the new N93 videophone has started shipping. I wrote a drooling post about this new phone when it was announced in April.

It’s three months on from that announcement and the opportunities for anyone to capture video and upload it to more sharing sites on the net has exploded.

If you make an easy-to-use tool available, at a reasonable price, that can satisfy actual and perceived demand, you stimulate a real market opportunity. Not just for the phone itself – think of the services that go along with it, not the least of which will be increased usage of networks as you use the phone.

For blogging, I think Nokia has a lead with its tie-up with TypePad through its Lifeblog product. I use that a lot on my Nokia N70 for posting photos to my moblog. It’s such a simple and fast process.

With more mobile phone manufacturers rolling out new video-capable models, video blogging and content sharing online will be a big and growing market.

A highly competitive one overall, too. I think brand loyalty will play a key role when there is so much choice among competing phone brands. Explaining each phone’s benefits and features in a way that ordinary people – especially younger people – can understand will also be key.

It would also be very interesting to see if Nokia can emulate the success of the N90 blogger campaign in the US last year. Assuming they intend on repeating that.

A great opportunity.

Related post:

• FIR interview 21/12/05 with Andy Abramson, CEO of Comunicano, the PR agency behind the N90 blogger campaign.