According to a press release written up last week by Telus, a telephone company in western Canada:
"Camera phones already outsell digital cameras worldwide." Mobile Imaging Report is quoted as saying, ""We estimate 250 million camera phones will be sold next year [2005], compared to just 67 million digital cameras."
Use of the word "worldwide" means that regionally the statement may not be true. And then there is the utility factor: do people prefer camera phones over digital cameras? Or are millions of cell (mobile) phones purchased, many of which now happen to include a low-grade camera? At social events and tourist spots, it is rare that people take pictures with phones.
I gotta chuckle at Telus calling 1.3 pixels "high-resolution imaging." And that's 4x better than the resolution commonly found in phones with cameras.
The real reason for promoting camera phones is added revenue for Telus. The press release speaks of "TELUS Mobility's picture messaging service allows clients to send their photos instantly to any e-mail address around the world, even adding text messages or voice or sound files to their snapshots. Clients can also instantly save their photos to their own online photo albums at mytelusmobility.com, where they can edit or print them, or send them directly to major photo finishing retailers."
... but fails to mention the expense of paying extra for all those benefits.
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