Eastman Kodak Company, which is shifting to digital photography as film sales decline, yesterday introduced what it said is the first digital camera able to send images without connecting to a computer.

The EasyShare-One camera, which allows users to share pictures on line or by e-mail, will be featured at the Consumer Electronics Show, opening today in Las Vegas, the Rochester, N.Y.-based company said. It is scheduled to go on sale in June for $599.

“It’s about immediacy, and one major reason consumers like digital photography is that ability to share pictures,” said Michelle Slaughter, who follows digital photography for InfoTrends, a Weymouth, Mass.-based market research company. “Kodak believes that increased sharing will drive printing and create a revenue stream.”

Kodak’s chief executive officer, Daniel Carp, 56, is transforming the world’s largest film manufacturer into a digital company based on consumer photography, medical imaging, and high-speed printing. More than half of its sales this year will come from digital markets, Mr. Carp said in October. The global market could grow to $29 billion this year, from about $24 billion in 2004, InfoTrends said in a report last month.

The new camera has a 4-megapixel sensor and a 3x optical zoom lens – the most popular configuration among consumers, according to Kodak. It also has 256 megabytes of internal memory, compared with 16 to 32 megabytes in current EasyShare models.

The internal memory can hold as many as 200 images for 8×10 inch prints, or 1,500 smaller pictures, or 20 minutes of television-quality video, the company said. It has a 3-inch liquid crystal display.

Users can transmit images through a proprietary wireless card that connects through a hub, or wireless router; a cell phone; or a so-called hot spot. Hot spots, installed at such places as airport waiting rooms or Starbucks coffee shops, enable wireless computers to connect to the Internet.

Kodak announced a partnership with T-Mobile, which has the largest cell-phone broadband network in America with more than 5,000 hot spots. The camera also can send images to a wireless printer even as users continue to take pictures, said a spokesman for Kodak’s Digital & Film Imaging Group, Michael McDougall.

Kodak wants to overtake Sony Corporation as the no. 1 seller of point-and-shoot digital cameras in America, the biggest single market. In the third quarter of 2004, Kodak shipped 990,000 digital cameras, compared with 1 million for Sony, according to Framingham, Mass.-based IDC, a market data company. In 2003, Sony’s market share fell to 21.7% from 24% in 2002. Kodak’s rose to 17.9% from 13% in the same period, IDC said.

About 42% of American households now have digital cameras, up from 28% in January 2003, according to the Consumer Electronics Association, an industry group.

The wireless technology does not come cheap. The EasyShare-One is priced higher than the $300 to $350 for competing models with similar image quality and a printer dock. Buyers must pay another $100 each for wireless cards to connect with the Internet and a printer, bringing the total to $799.

“It’s a premium camera,” Ms. Slaughter said. “It’s not a mass-market product yet,” something that could be two or more years down the road, she said.

Photographs, photo albums and videos can be uploaded from and downloaded to Kodak’s online storage service, Ofoto. “This camera is the first to unify an online photo service with hardware,” Ms. Slaughter said. “Camera phones have sharing capability but they’re not very high quality.”

Simplicity of use will be the key to getting more people to switch to digital cameras, said Willy Shih, the Kodak senior vice president who built consumer digital photography into a $1 billion business by 2003.

“If you look at what Kodak is really good at, it’s taking complex technology and packaging it in a way that makes it very simple,” said Mr. Shih, who in November said he would leave Kodak on January 31.

Market research showed that consumers find it difficult to transfer pictures into their computers, Kodak said. It designed a dock for existing EasyShare models, eliminating the need to connect and disconnect cables for printing or viewing on a computer. The printer dock, which also charges the camera’s batteries, had $100 million in sales in its first year through March 2004.