Disappointment with Quality and Cost Limits Usage of Camera Phones
In-Stat have a new report on camera phone usage. I found this particularly interesting as I previously created Pixology’s PhonePrint application.
“People who haven’t yet purchased camera phones are very enthusiastic about all the uses for their images,” says David Chamberlain, In-Stat analyst. “However, once they start using their new phones, they are turned off by perceived poor picture quality, slow network speeds, and the difficulty of creating and sending pictures. Our survey found that very few pictures actually make their way out of the handset to be shared with others.”
While picture quality isn’t that good, I personally think it is good enough for the snapshot type pictures people are taking. Slow network speeds and difficulties in transferring images are probably more to blame. People are being encouraged to send their images over the mobile network which can be tricky, time consuming and costly.
In the future, I expect greater use of PC (Bluetooth, USB) and WiFi connections to upload images. Camera imaging applications need to include facilities such as those provided by ShoZu so that everyone can upload easily.
The In-Stat report goes on to make the prediction that there will be from 300–850 million mobile users that will send at least one image per month across the carrier network by 2010.