Camera-enabled mobile phones are the fastest-growing personal technology product in history
Camera phones are expected to eat away 40 per cent of the digital camera market by 2008, according to a report published in a leading South Korean daily recently.
The daily quotes research conducted by the LG Economic Research Institute (LGERI). "As camera phones are equipped with multi-megapixel resolution, they pose a genuine threat to digital cameras. This trend will continue for years ahead," LGERI researcher Cho Joon-il says.
"A couple of years ago, we expected the resolution ceiling of camera phones would be set at 2 megapixels, but it didn't take long to prove our assumption was wrong," he says.
By 2005, the analyst firm ARC Group predicts that 130 million of them will be in use worldwide. About 6 million of 148 million cellular customers in the US own camera phones - a number that is quickly growing. An estimated 50 to 90 per cent of US cell phones will contain built-in cameras by 2007, according to market research.
Camera phones first appeared in Japan in late 1999. After a slow start, the sale of camera phones began burgeoning around the world. Though the camera functionalities of cell phones still lag a long way behind 'regular' cameras in terms of resolution and features, these phones are suited to capture quick personal images.
But the progress of technology means camera phones with a one-megapixel image sensor and above, will become the mainstream choice of handsets in the global handset market in 2006, according to CL Cheng, research manager of the Industrial Economics and Knowledge Center (IEK) under Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI).
Chipmakers are also putting forth all-out efforts to develop next-generation chipset solutions, which will allow up to 6-megapixel resolutions in handsets.
Recent top-of-the-line camera phones contain features like auto focus or optical zoom, which have been specific to digital cameras. Camera phones are expected to substitute digital cameras in a full-fledged manner when phones adopt resolution amounting to 4 to 5 megapixels, according to research projections.
Besides sending pictures to someone else on airtime, there is a lot else you can do with camera phones. Send them to your laptop, PDA or PC via infrared or Bluetooth. You can send them to compatible phones. You can also send images to desktop PCs by email or download photos with a USB cord or using infrared wireless technology.
"A few short years from now, adding the qualifier 'mobile' to the word 'imaging' will be quite superfluous. Capture and transmission of images independent from wires and walls will be assumed as a matter of course," says Alexis Gerard, president, Future Image Inc. "Today, however, the confluence of imaging and wireless technologies is entirely new, exciting and unpredictable. Camera-enabled mobile phones are not just the fastest growing personal technology product in history, they are an extraordinarily powerful agent of change that will transform the way we communicate with each other in our personal and business lives."
The camera phone trend has caught on in the UAE as well and with more and more manufacturers introducing models with competitive rates, these phones are well within the range of the average customer. It is easy to distinguish camera phones from other mobile phones by the small lens. Some are static - installed in the back of a phone or on the top of a flip phone. Some have an adjustable lens, which you can toggle up and down. There are also phones, which have the facility to add snap-on cameras.
Samsung Electronics recently introduced two new mobile phones, the SGH-E600, and SGH-E310 in the market, which are being promoted as the world's smallest camera phones. In addition to a built-in VGA camera, they also feature a photo caller ID function enabling mobile enthusiasts to assign pictures to numbers in the phone book.
Encased in a small and sophisticated form, the SGH-E600 mobile phone boasts a super-fine VGA camera providing enhanced digital features such as: multi shot, matrix shot, night shot and easy self portrait. The M-JPEG, with sound programme, allows users to record real motion picture-like quality and virtual animation by utilising its ability to take still photos in rapid succession.
Sony Ericsson has unveiled the K700i camera phone, featuring the latest in imaging, multimedia, and entertainment functions, as well as a rich offering of advanced messaging and connectivity technologies.
This includes playing video clips, capturing images and video with the built-in camera, and listening to the built-in FM radio. With the integrated VGA camera, consumers can take still pictures as well as video clips and either store them in the phone memory or send them as a picture message or an e-mail. Owing to Sony Ericsson's QuickShare feature, it is very simple to use the imaging features of the K700i. The camera features a 4x digital zoom and Photo Light to improve the quality of images.
With the introduction of the advanced Multi Media Messaging Service (MMS) last year, camera phones became a coveted item for most people as this service allows them to transmit their photographs or any other picture they take to computers, e-mails or other MMS-enabled phones thousands of miles away. Such a facility, coupled with a steady decline in handset prices, has instructed new life into UAE's mobile phone market that had become dormant and saturated.
