Convergence - mobile, still, and video

The largest increase in amateur photography of the past generation has been driven not by the internet or the advent of digital cameras. The mobile phone camera has changed the landscape of photography. According to the Photographic Marketing Association, 70m cameras were sold in 2003, a significant number. In 2010, more than 10x that number of camera-equipped mobile phones were sold. This explosion has impacted the way people capture, communicate, and consider digital photography; a casually captured image can be used for comparison shopping, social communication, or ad-hoc news reporting.

So the upside - lots more opportunities to capture images and video. The downside for many would-be photographers is a disappointment in the quality and flexibility of the camera platform. Lacking some of the compelling features of a point-and-shoot camera, such as optical zoom, can be frustrating. More importantly, the photographic sensitivity (ISO speed) of popular phones such as the iPhone 3Gs makes shooting clear images of a moving subject all but impossible.

Herein lies a significant barrier - the size and cost of the optical package required to support quality image capture is not easily pushed into a thin phone case. This is also perhaps the largest opportunity for the next-generation phone to usurp the point-and-shoot camera market. New lens options such as the Varioptic liquid lens promise a thin package capable of optical zoom. Other directions such as folded optics (seen on Panasonic and Sony cameras) could keep the slender profile of the phone intact.

The larger issue of sensitivity is increasingly looking like a nearly-solved problem. Evolving sensor technology combined with reasonable optics is competitive with point-and-shoot cameras.

Video capture usage has been spurred by Youtube and enabled by efficient encoding using H.264-based encoding such as MP4. Most smartphones now support video capture in these formats already.

The largest outstanding question now is one of market and behavior; will consumers perceive enough value in a high-quality camera embedded in a phone to pay the extra cost of development and manufacturing involved in providing it. Nokia invested considerably in the cameras of their smartphones - complete with Carl Zeiss optics and xenon flash - and didn't own the market as a result. My prediction - the next generation of smartphones from RIM, Apple, HTC, Nokia and Samsung will include at least one breakthrough camera-centric design which seriously lets a user put their point-and-shoot camera (and camcorder) away for good....