« The Open Future: Spirits in the Material World | Main | WIDENS »

Camera Phone Dominance

2005 was the biggest year yet for camera phones, those pocket-size precursors to the participatory panopticon and potential planetary protection tool (yes, I got a special deal on "p"s, why do you ask?). Market research group NPD reports:

In 2005, 45 percent of all mobile phones sold in the U.S. were camera phones, up from 26 percent in 2004. Asia followed a very similar trend. Western Europe had a higher incidence of camera phones at 64 percent, and Japan had a much greater adoption rate with more than 90 percent of all mobile phones sold with camera capabilities both in 2004 and 2005.

This tells us two things: we're on the verge of seeing a major blow-up between advocates of strict control over recordings of intellectual property and advocates of universal use of communication tools; and we're approaching a point where location-based information and communication systems relying on cameraphones will have a large enough base of potential users to really make a go of it.

(Via Picturephoning)

About

This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on February 28, 2006 1:18 PM.

The previous post in this blog was The Open Future: Spirits in the Material World.

The next post in this blog is WIDENS.

Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.

Powered by
Movable Type 3.34