An interesting article from BW Online.
businessweek.com
<<The Camphone Revolution
These wildly popular devices will transform the world of photography>>
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<<Last year sales of camera phones from all makers topped 84 million units worldwide -- nearly twice the purchases of conventional digital cameras. Consumers turn out to love the convenience of having a point-and-shoot camera wherever they tote their phones. This year, says Strategy Analytics, a research company in Newton Centre, Mass., camera phone sales should double, to 169 million units, or about a quarter of all handsets. By 2006 the number could top 380 million. People aren't shy about clicking the shutter, either. According to InfoTrends Research Group Inc. in Norwell, Mass., consumers will snap a staggering 29 billion photos with their camera phones this year. "This is a revolution," says InfoTrends analyst Jill Aldort.
"DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGY". The shock waves are rippling through the imaging business. Sales of film and traditional cameras -- already hurt by the rise of digital photography -- could suffer further blows. Digital camera makers are being forced to move upmarket as camera phones take over the lower end. And a whole new industry built around camphone snaps is starting to whip into gear. Mobile operators from Britain's Vodafone PLC to Sprint PCS Group (PCS ) in the U.S. have launched services that let customers upload photos from cell phones to online sites, where the pictures can be stored or sent off to be printed. Manufacturers such as Hewlett-Packard (HPQ ), Seiko Epson, and Canon (CAJ ) are rolling out inexpensive color photo printers that connect wirelessly to handsets -- with no need to store pictures first on a PC. Just snap a photo, zap it to the printer via Bluetooth short-range radio, and 15 seconds later you have a copy to send to Grandma.>>
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<< Nokia wants to hasten that process. It entered an alliance with Kodak last summer to put tens of thousands of kiosks in stores around the world. The machines, done up in Kodak yellow and Nokia slate, accept digital photos from CDs, memory cards, or via wireless connections and print 4-in.-by-6-in. or 5-by-7 photos for about 40 cents each. Nokia also just announced an assortment of gizmos that help consumers enjoy their photos at home without a PC. One, called the Nokia Image Album, is the size of a hardcover book and stores upwards of 20,000 digital photos on a 20-gigabyte hard drive. Attached to a TV, it lets people view images and organize slide shows. "It's a digital shoebox for snapshots," says Putkiranta.
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