27% of Photos in 2011 were taken with a smartphone

Smartphones are eating into sales of basic cameras and camcorders in the US, according to market researchers. The BBC reports.

The NPD Group said the point-and-shoot camera market sold 17% fewer units over the first 11 months of the year compared to the same period in 2010.

It said the pocket camcorder market fell by 13% over the same period.

Its online survey of adults and teenagers suggested users were also more likely to opt for their phone camera to take footage "on the fly".

... The study suggested that 44% of photos were taken on a camera over the last year, down from 52% over the previous period. By contrast the share of photos taken with a smartphone rose to 27% from 17%.

Experts suggest the trend is in part due to the popularity of apps including Instagram, Twitter and Facebook which allow pictures to be uploaded to social networks immediately after they are taken.

Read full article.

Instagram signs up a new user every second

Less than a year after it launched its photo-sharing service for the iPhone, Instagram has more than 10 million users who are uploading an average of 26 new pictures every second, co-founder and CEO Kevin Systrom told attendees at GigaOM’s Mobilize conference in San Francisco on Tuesday.

[via GigaOM]

Previously: - Exhibition in London dedicated to Instagram app lovers

140 billion photos stored on Facebook thats more than in the Library of Congress

Digital cameras are now ubiquitous - it is estimated that 2.5 billion people in the world today have a digital camera. If the average person snaps 150 photos this year that would be a staggering 375 billion photos. News3.0 Media:Lab reports.

That might sound implausible but this year people will upload over 70 billion photos to Facebook, suggesting around 20% of all photos this year will end up there.

Already Facebook’s photo collection has a staggering 140 billion photos, that’s over 10,000 times larger than the Library of Congress.

[via 1000Memories.com]

Conference honors first cameraphone photo taken in 1997

Bolt | Peters and Blurb are honoring the date the first camera phone photo was taken, June 11, 1997, with a one-day conference dedicated to iPhoneography and mobile photography called 1197.

[via The Laughing Squid]

According to Wikipedia, the irst camera-phone image (above) taken by Philippe Kahn at the birth of his daughter Sophie on June 11, 1997 and wirelessly shared with more than 2000 people around the world instantly.

Summer 2011 in photos: Cellphone cameras boom, digital cameras wane

New research shows that the summer of 2011 saw more people using their mobile phones to take photos than ever before. GigaOM reports.

Cellphone camera usage has taken off significantly in the past eight months alone, according to a “Summer Photo Usage Survey” sponsored by Photobucket, which polled more than 2500 participants during July. Fully 58 percent of respondents said they had used a camera phone to capture and share photos, up from 27 percent during the company’s 2010 Holiday Survey conducted in December.

Increasingly, people aren’t just using their cellphone cameras to capture static images. 45 percent of survey respondents said they use a mobile device to capture video at least once a week, while 17 percent said they use a mobile device to take video at least once a day.

Read full article. Case in point, photo above taken this summer in Lucerne with my iPhone.

Smartphones a real menace to camera society

The impact of smartphones on the camera business has been highlighted in a new report that reveals that 44% of smartphone owners claim the device has replaced their digital camera. Photo Imaging News reports.

According to a recent Prosper Mobile Insights survey in the US, smartphones have replaced a myriad of devices, headed by:

-- Alarm clock 61.1%

-- GPS 52.3%

-- Digital camera 44.3%

-- Personal planner 41.6%

-- Landline phone 40.3%

-- MP3 player 37.6%

-- Video camera 34.2%

This survey coincides with the release of Photo Marketing Association’s 2011 Smartphone Report, a major research study into the picture-taking behaviour of smartphone users.

The 116-page report covers a survey of more than 2000 smartphone users. Topics included picture-taking behaviour (quantity and quality perception), buying influences, photography functions, photo apps and output preferences.

Read full press release.

Mobile Video Streaming Stats

Mobile data use grew by 77% for the first half of the year and YouTube accounts for 22% of that, according to a new MobileTrends Report released Tuesday by Allot Communications.

Video streaming grew 93% for that period and is the largest single application taking up bandwidth. Some 39% of mobile bandwidth is consumed by video. File-sharing represents 29% of mobile bandwidth. Web browsing takes up 29%.

[via Mashable]

Cell phone users getting the picture

Increasingly, people are turning to their telephone for pictures. PJStar reports.

According to a recent survey in PC Magazine, 43 percent of the magazine's readers reported that they mainly use their phone's camera to snap photos.

In addition, the photo hosting website Flickr noted last month that the iPhone 4 had surpassed the Nikon D90 as the most popular camera used by members on the site.

Interest by cell phone users in the camera offered has increased, said Leon Horton, area sales manager for U.S. Cellular in Peoria. "Now people ask which phone has the best camera. It used to be more of an interest of the younger generation. Now even older customers want to take pictures with their phone," he said.

Read more.

High-Resolution Cameras Will Drive Mobile Phone Shipments Above 1 Billion

Mobile phones equipped with cameras will pass the 1 billion-unit shipment mark for the first time this year, with the highest resolution models rising the fastest, market research firm Strategy Analytics said.

[via Bloomberg]

Mobile Video Reaches Few Users, Puts Huge Strain on Network

One out of ten mobile users are watching video content on their devices. But the video they consume accounts for a staggering 38% of all data volume on mobile networks. Mashable reports.

These stats and more were released Monday in mobile services company Bytemobile‘s Mobile Minute Metrics report. The company also found that by the end of this year, video content will jump to 60% of all network data volume.

And as one might expect, much of this volume comes from a core of power users; the report states that 10% of mobile data users generate 87% of total traffic.

Read full article.

130 million photos uploaded to Flickr every month

Flickr, just one of a number of popular photo sites, saw 130 million photos uploaded to the site each month. From Internet monitoring service Pingdom's research report creating a picture of the year online.

[via Bits]

Foursquare Surpasses 1 Million Photo Check-ins

Foursquare said in a statement today that over a million photos have been uploaded to its service by the week ended January 9, 2011.

The Location-based service currently has more than 5 million registered users, and is growing at a rate of (at least) 1 million new registered users each month.

[via WWWery]

Phones expected to reverse camera market growth

The glory days of the digital camera market are coming to an end.

So concludes analyst firm iSuppli, which forecasts modest growth in coming years followed by decline as new camera phones take over - all of which have cameras with resolutions as high as 8 megapixels.

[via CNet CES]

Facebook users upload record 750M photos over New Year’s weekend

A record-breaking 750 million photos were uploaded to Facebook over New Year's weekend, the social network announced Tuesday afternoon.

Photos is arguably Facebook's most popular feature, and one that the social network has improved through a number of product updates this year.

[via Technology Live]

Over 3.5 million Nokia N8 sold since launch 3 months ago

Noki'as 12 megapixel camera, the first model running on Symbian 3 operating system, is one of Nokia N8 strongest selling points and it has received good critics among reviewers, reports Esatp.

Several reputable camera magazines and web sites rated the N8 as an excellent camera phone much because of the Carl Zeiss optics and not because of the user interface.

The independent Finnish research firm Inderes said yesterday that 3.5 to 4 million Nokia N8 devices were estimated to have shipped since launch.

Read full article.

Kodak faces shifting camera market

While many memories were captured on digital cameras, an increasing number are snapped on smartphones or cell phones, a trend that is putting a key Eastman Kodak Co. product into a tightening squeeze. The digital camera business, particularly for point-and-shoot cameras, faces a challenging future as consumers turn to higher-end digital SLR cameras or camera phones. [via The Democrat and Chronicle]

For the first 11 months of 2010, U.S. retail sales of point-and-shoot cameras were down 6 percent from the same timeframe in 2009, according to consumer and retail market research company NPD Group. Those 2009 numbers were, in turn, down 10 percent from 2008.

... German photo paper distributor Felix Schoeller reportedly has estimated that by 2014, there will be roughly 2 billion camera phones in the market, a 69 percent jump from 2009.

Increasing numbers of snapshots are being taken on smartphones. Denver-based online photo sharing site Photobucket saw a 400 percent increase this year in the number of photos uploaded from smartphones, and expects that growth rate to continue in 2011.

Read full article.

Related: - Camera Phone officially kills film camera

Foursquare, Gowalla, Instagram: Mobile photos are everywhere

It’s been a big week for numbers about photos writes Venture Beat.

Yesterday, location-based service Foursquare launched the latest version of its app with support for photo-sharing, and chief executive Dennis Crowley said later in the day that the service was already approaching one photo uploaded per second. Competitor Gowalla said today that its users have posted 1 million photos.

Read full article.

Mobile Video On The Rise, But Still Only A Fraction Of All Usage

Figures to be released by Nielsen indicate that the number of people watching all forms of mobile video in the U.S. has increased by 43 percent over the last year, and people are watching for longer, too. mocoNews.net reports.

In its latest State of the Media report on mobile video usage, Nielsen says that 22 million people accessed some form of mobile video in Q2 2010, compared to 15.3 million in the same quarter a year earlier.

Included in the figures are people who viewed mobile videos in apps, over the web, subscription-based services and downloads.

The growth here is outpacing that of general mobile subscriber growth, which is very saturated in the U.S.

Read full report.

Online video use expanding on mobile phones

The latest survey of web video usage from Bytemobile shows that smartphone users are watching it in ever larger quantities. ComputerWorldUK reports.

For the third calendar quarter, the Bytemobile data shows:

-- User-generated videos on YouTube and Google on average are about 48% of total network video traffic (adult content is 31% of the total)

-- Video content is already a significant percentage of smartphone data traffic, with iPhone users currently generating more of it than Android: For iPhone users on average, 42% of their total data traffic is video, the number for Android user is 32%.

-- Video traffic picks up and grows steadily throughout the day, but the peak hours are in the evening, which also tracks the distribution of mobile users. Bytemobile says this indicates video is increasingly an entertainment-based selection, outside of work hours.

Read more.

Pew Report: Skype, Apple FaceTime, Google Chat Spur Video Calling

Roughly 20 percent of online U.S. adults have conducted video calls via the Web or their cell phones, according to Pew Research Center's Internet & American Project. Apple FaceTime, Skype and Google Chat will fuel the rise. eWeek reports.

Users joined video calls, chats or teleconferences from the Web via their computers to the tune of some 23 percent, while 7 percent have used their phones for such tasks.

Often, people placed video calls on both the Internet and their cell phone, but Pew only counted those who said they had used both mediums to participate in video calling once.

Read full article. Pew report: "Video calling and video chat".

Number of Mobile viewers during the World Cup

mocoNews.net on mobile viewers during the World Cup.

ESPN says its FIFA World Cup App was downloaded more than 2.5 million times. On average, one million people accessed it each day during the tournament. The company also says its Mobile TV offering had nearly one million unique users who watched more than 2 million hours of coverage in total.

Univision’s Futbol App was downloaded more than 450,000 times on Apple’s App Store.

Read full article.

More Adults Than Teens Consume Mobile Video

According to Nielsen in its latest "Three Screen" quarterly report for the first quarter of 2010, more than half (55%) of the mobile video audience is actually adults, it finds, aged 25-49.

And while mobile video viewing on a smartphone still remains a niche activity in comparison to total audience size, its year-over-year growth (51.2%) is impressive.

[via The New York Times]

Mobile Uploads Spur Facebook Video Growth

Facebook’s nearly half a billion users are now uploading 20 million videos each month, many of which are shared through mobile phones.

[via Bits]

Smartphones: 30 times as much bandwidth as regular mobile phones to run apps

The popularity of feature-rich smartphones such as the BlackBerry, Apple's iPhone, and Motorola's Droid has surged, but they use as much as 30 times as much bandwidth as regular mobile phones to run the applications, or "apps," that make them so popular. Reuters reports.

The surge in traffic triggered by video and other apps has led to more dropped calls and choppy service. As video on smartphones becomes more popular, it is leading to more congestion, and forcing carriers to spend billions to upgrade networks and buy more wireless spectrum.

Read full article.

Nanotechnology could improve the quality of mobile-phone cameras

Cameraphones, a gimmick and a luxury a few years ago, have become ubiquitous. The ITU estimates that 4.6 billion mobile phones are in use at the moment. Of those, more than a billion are equipped with cameras, according to Tom Hausken, an analyst at Strategies Unlimited. Dr Hausken estimates that some 800m camera-phones will be sold this year. The Economist reports.

Yet most of the photos taken with these phones will be grainy and of low resolution, the reason is that both camera and lens have to be small, to fit with all the other gubbins on a phone.

A typical camera-phone is equipped with a one- or two-megapixel silicon-based camera chip that is about 8mm across. Phone cameras with up to five megapixels are becoming available, but InVisage, a small firm based in Menlo Park, California, hopes to leap from that to a photographically respectable 12 megapixels, without an increase in size or cost, by adding tiny crystals called quantum dots to the process.

Read full article

Survey. 1/3 of young adults have sexted

According to a survey by MTV and the Associated Press, 1/3 of young adults admit to having sexted (sent nude photos from their cameraphones) and 1/4 of teenagers.

[via IntoMobile]

Camera Phone Officially Kills Film Camera

Ontela, Inc., provider of award-winning imaging services for wireless carriers, released survey results today that indicate the imminent death of the traditional film camera amongst U.S. consumers.

The last three years of data have shown a steady decline in people who report owning a traditional film camera, decreasing from 67% in 2007, to 61% in 2008, and dropping all the way to 48% in 2009.

Conversely, camera phones continue to grow in ubiquity, going from just 70% reporting that they owned a phone with a camera in 2007, to 78% in 2008 and 87% in 2009.

[Read full news release from Business Wire. Image from Switched]

Nielsen: Mobile Video Use Lags Behind

For all the promise of mobile video as a new media platform, in the second quarter, there were about 15.3 million active mobile video users, according to a recent Nielsen Mobile Video Report.

-- This represents just 7% of all those who have mobile phones -- roughly 220 million people in the U.S. The silver lining, of sorts, is that this number is up 70% versus 2008's 10-million subscriber mobile video mark.

-- Half of U.S. mobile subscribers -- 52% -- still carry phones that aren't even capable of viewing video, and that's just a bit better than the 62% number a year ago.

-- Almost all current mobile video users -- 78% -- are first-year users.

[via Mediapost]

iPhone to Become #1 Camera on Flickr

For the longest time, the Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi has been the most widely used camera on Flickr.

But while Canon has dominated, there’s another camera that’s been zipping up the Flickr charts, it's the iPhone, according to according to Flickr’s Camera Finder graphs.

[via Mashable]

Streaming, not P2P, behind mobile broadband data usage surge

Mobile data use grew by 30 percent in the second quarter of this year as HTTP streaming from sites like YouTube and Hulu surged 58 percent. P2P use can cause mobile data congestion, but it's growing far more slowly than other kinds of data traffic. arstechnica reports.

According to the report, "What is most noticeable from the data gathered in this report is that subscribers are treating their mobile networks much the same as they treat their fixed networks. This is particularly true for heavy data users who seem to expect the same service from the Internet, irrespective of their access method."

YouTube Mobile Uploads Up 400% Since iPhone 3GS Launch

YouTube reports that in the six days since the iPhone 3GS was released last week, the number of mobile uploads has increased by a whopping 400%. For a single phone model to have such a major impact on the site is simply phenomenal. [via TechCrunch]

Even without the iPhone, YouTube is seeing major growth across the entire mobile space — the site has seen uploads go up 1700% over the last six months. It’s not hard to guess why. Video-enabled smartphones are becoming increasingly popular, as are high speed data connections.

YouTube also attributes part of the growth to a streamlined upload flow (note how easy it is to upload a video from your iPhone to the site), as well as its improved sharing capabilities (you can now syndicate your videos to services like Facebook and Twitter).

Fifty-four percent don't need mobile video

FierceMobile Content reports on a new consumer study issued by global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing firm Accenture:

-- 79 percent of subscribers still use their mobile phones primarily as a channel to communicate via voice, text and email

-- 54 percent indicating their don't want or need mobile video services

--14 percent of users surveyed contend mobile services are too expensive and 9 percent add that video-enabled handsets are too expensive as well

-- When asked if the availability of mobile content would drive them to upgrade their mobile data plan to include video services, 70 percent replied "to a very little extent."

Other findings of the Accenture report:

-- The percentage of consumers watching video on a mobile phone rose from 12 percent in late 2007 to 14 percent in late 2008

-- The percentage of consumers accessing the mobile web rose from 8 percent in 2007 to 23 percent in 2008

-- About a third of respondents indicate web browsing is one of their top three favorite mobile applications

-- Almost 25 percent indicate listening to music on their mobile phone browsing is one of their top three favorite mobile applications

Although consumers are reluctant to embrace multimedia on their mobile phones, Accenture reports a growing number of respondents are embracing new forms of digital entertainment: Baby Boomers ages 45 and up are increasingly playing videogames on the go and listening to music via MP3 player, although they remain far behind Generation Y in actual usage.

In addition, Boomers are adapting to new digital platforms like blogging, social networking and Internet video, but remain far behind younger generations.

Nielsen: Mobile Video Usage Small, But Growing

Despite the popularity of the iPhone, and the general touch screen mania that has been sweeping the U.S. over the past year, still very few people actually watch video on their cell phones. But the numbers are on the rise, according to a new report issued by The Nielsen Company. MediaWeek reports.

According to Nielsen, 10.3 million U.S. mobile subscribers access video content on their phones during a given month, or just 5 percent of all wireless subscribers. However, the audience is growing—up 14 percent versus 2007--driven primarily to more Internet-friendly phones in the market.

A fifth of teens send nude pics on phones

A survey of hundreds of American teenagers claims that one in five of them have sent pictures of themselves partially clothed by text. Metro Boston News reports.

And twice as many claim to have sent explicit SMS messages from their cell phones, according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, whose survey was carried out jointly with cosmogirl.com.

Although they conceded that there was high risk of embarrassment, or a risk of disappointing their family, more than a fifth of those teenagers surveyed said sending nude pictures of themselves and sexually explicit messages was “no big deal.”

Nielsen: Mobile Video Use Rises

According to data compiled by Nielsen for the third quarter of 2008, more than 100 million U.S. consumers -- 42 percent of mobile subscribers -- have video-capable cell phones. An estimated 10.3 million of those mobile consumers are watching TV/video on their cell phones.

These findings indicate that mobile video viewing has increased 14 percent compared to Q2 2008.

[via AdWeek]

Mobile Video Still a Niche Market

According to the latest data from Comscore, 6.5 million Americans watched videos on their cell phones in August. YouTube-style amateur videos ranked as the most popular type of content, followed closely by music and comedy videos. The New York Times reports.

Comscore also released some data about general mobile media consumption trends, where the survey found that, year-over-year, more users are now using their mobile devices to access social networking services and read news stories, while fewer users are downloading ringtones and games.

In the US, only 3% watch TV on their cell phone

Only 3 percent of Americans regularly watched video on their cell phones in 2007, according to a survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

[via AP]

Nielsen Reports TV, Internet and Mobile Usage Among Americans

The Nielsen Company today released the first comparable U.S. figures showing video and TV usage across the 'three screens' - Television, Internet and Mobile devices. (pdf)

Nielsen's findings show that screen time of the average American continues to increase with TV users watching more TV than ever before (127hrs, 15 min per month), while also spending 9% more time using the Internet (26 hrs, 26 min per month) from last year.

At the same time, a small but growing number of Internet and mobile phone users are watching video online (2 hrs, 19 min per month), as well as using their cell phones to watch video (3 hrs, 15 min per month).

... As of Q1 2008, 91 million Americans (36% of all mobile phone subscribers in the U.S.) owned a video-capable phone.

[via PR Newswire]

Photo Messaging Climbed 60 Percent in the United States During the Past Year

comScore Inc. has released the latest figures from the M:Metrics Benchmark Study report saying that photo messaging from mobile phones has grown 60 percent in the US over the past year and 16 percent in Europe.

As the mercury climbs in the summer months, so does the usage of photo messaging in the United States, where for the past three years, photo messaging rates have been higher than average in July and August.

The M:Metrics Benchmark Study indicates that the photo messaging growth in the U.S. is coming from all age demographic segments, with the fastest growth coming from teens and those older than 35. In the more developed European market, the strongest growth is coming from those aged 55 years and older.

[via M:Metrics e-mail press release]

AT&T to boost online content distribution

As more companies launch websites with video and interactive features, AT&T said it will spend nearly $70 million by the end of the year to bolster its network infrastructure across the United States, Europe and parts of Asia.

[via Reuters]

Mobile internet use 'rocketing in Europe'

Europe has taken to 3G faster than any other region in the world and usage is growing rapidly as networks proliferate, according to research commissioned by mobile operator body the GSM Association. silicon.com reports.

"The EU's mobile data market grew by 40 per cent last year, to €7bn ($13.7bn), the research found, with 3G users doubling to 112 million in the year to April 2008.

The GSMA said the falling cost of 3G services, handsets and 3G-enabled laptops and dongles are helping to drive the market, and it claimed mobile broadband services in some European markets are now priced lower than comparable fixed-line broadband.

Competition from wi-fi is also helping to bring prices down, it said."

37 percent of iPhone users watch video

According to Nielsen Mobile's first-quarter 2008 data on iPhones, 37 percent of iPhone users watch video (ten times more than the average cellphone user).

[via Bits]

Video on cellphones not taking off

Americans are watching more video on their PCs -- but not on their cellphones, according to a recent study from researcher Ipsos MediaCT. USA Today reports.

"Ipsos surveyed Americans who had downloaded or streamed at least one video. (Anyone who has ever been to YouTube counts.) That group watched an average of 70% of their video on TV, down from 75% a year ago, the study says. The amount of video watched on a PC rose.

So far, the amount of video watched on a cellphone or PDA is around 1%."

3G services 'largely unused' in Australia

A third of Australian consumers own a 3G-capable phone but two thirds of these do not use the available 3G services, a new report, part of the Australian Communications and Media Authority Telecommunications Today series, has revealed. [via
Stuff.co.nz]

"Half of those who owned a 3G phone but did not use the 3G services - which include mobile internet, video calling and music streaming - had no interest in them. Others cited high costs and lack of knowledge on how to access the services.

... The low use of 3G services among those with 3G-capable mobiles was due to lack of knowledge and the historically high costs.

"Some people wouldn't even know if they're on 3G or not ... they want an [Nokia] N95 because it can play videos or has a good camera - they get a 3G phone for the features not for the fact that it's 3G," said Mark Novosel, telecommunications market analyst at IDC.

Panasonic Sells its 100 Millionth Cell Phone in Japan

Panasonic has become the first cell-phone manufacturer to ship 100 million units in the Japanese market, reports PC World.

"... Its popularity has led Panasonic to put some of the know-how from its flat-panel TV business into its latest phones. The newest models carry the same Viera brand-name as its big-screen TVs. "