CEMRA PHONE: Here, There, Everywhere

Till some time back, it would have been beyond all imagination that a mobile
phone vendor would emerge as the world's number one camera manufacturer. But,
thanks to the growing popularity of camera phones globally, Nokia is today the
world's number one camera maker-it ships more cameras (in phones) than any
of the camera manufacturers. Nokia expects to sell nearly 100 million camera
phones this year.

While camera manufacturers may dislike the competition and loss of market to
mobile-phone makers, the popularity of camera phones has indeed created millions
of new photographers across the world. Combine this with the emergence of what
is sometimes called an 'imaging ecosystem' (made up primarily of
camera-phone makers, Web-based photo sharing services, mobile operators, camera
manufacturers, and photo printing service providers) and users are having more
fun with their mobiles: capturing more, accessing more, and sharing more.
"Mobile photography has overtaken every other form of photography,"
says Juha Putkiranta, senior vice president, Imaging, Nokia.

It is expected that more than 400 mn digital cameras would be sold in 2005.
More than three-quarters (78.62%) of them will be embedded in mobile phones.

However, despite putting cameras in millions of hands, camera-phone makers
and their partners face a daunting task ahead, if they want to help users get
most out of their camera phones and also sustain the market momentum. Their
challenge would fall into two broad categories-user awareness and behaviour,
and camera specifications especially battery power and memory. And vendors and
service providers seem to be very conscious of these challenges. They admit that
a lot needs to be done to educate consumers and bring about a change in their
behaviour for everybody to benefit in the ecosystem.

Sale of camera phones has overtaken the sale of digital cameras by many times	In 2005, 79% of all cameras sold would be in camera phones

Besides the handset vendors, mobile operators are also trying hard to benefit
from the emergence of mobile-phone photography, by offering photo sharing and
printing services. However, many issues have dampened the uptake of
photography-related services by mobile operators. In addition to the issues
related to interoperability, operators don't have a business model yet nor a
pricing that would make their services attractive. What has been encouraging
though, is that there has been a clear uptake of mobile-photo printing services.

Putkiranta says in the foreseeable future, battery life would be the most
difficult part to tackle. "There are many ways of dealing with the problem
but there has been no real breakthrough in battery technology," he says.
The other challenging area is that of memory -camera phones are driving the
need for more memory, as users want to click and store as much pictures as
possible. "Thankfully there would be many innovations in memory in the next
few years," Putkiranta observes.

What next after camera phones? Nokia is betting on videophones. "We will
make videography mass consumer behaviour. Video is much better and much more
fun. And that would be the next big wave," Putkiranta exults.

Ravi Shekhar Pandey