Infotrends have released a Mobile Imaging Study into camera phone usage and predicts that worldwide camera phone shipments will grow from 233 million units in 2004 to 903 million units in 2010. By 2010, camera phones are expected to account for 87% of all mobile phone handsets shipped.

The press release says…

"Key findings include:

• The total number of images captured on camera phones will reach 228 billion by 2010, exceeding the number of photos taken on digital still cameras and film cameras combined.
  
• or many consumers, the camera phone will be their everyday camera. Camera phones will put immense competitive pressures on one-time use cameras and low-end cameras.
  
• The rapid growth of camera phones will create growing opportunities for printing and sharing of images. The value of camera phone photo printing will reach approximately $7.0 billion by 2010, approximately 60% of which will take place in the home."

Over this last year I have worked on several camera phone related projects. The main limiting factor has been the requirement to upload images via GPRS or 3G. It tends to be costly and less reliable than people expect. This year, many more phones will ship with WiFi which will provide a fast and low cost way to upload images for subsequent storage, manipulation, sharing and printing.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 19th, 2006 at 3:34 pm and is filed under Mobile. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.