People finding more reasons to use camera phones

By Erika D. Smith
Knight Ridder News Service

Don't like being photographed?

Well, traditional cameras soon may be the least of your worries. Now cell phones have eyes, too, and they're everywhere.

Take the Sprite Liquid Mix concert in Cleveland last month. Dozens of camera phones floated above the standing crowd to snap shots of the stage, even though traditional cameras were prohibited.

Or take the Dallas Morning News. A day after space shuttle Columbia disintegrated, the newspaper published photos taken with cell phones.

Or take the teenager in Clifton, N.J., who led police to a man who tried to kidnap him in August. Police arrested the suspect the next day based on a photo of the man and his license plate, the Associated Press reported.

"The demand for camera phones is definitely growing," said Laura Merritt of Verizon, the nation's largest wireless carrier.

Companies such as Sprint and T-Mobile are rolling out camera phones left and right to make the most out of the craze. And unlike phone services to surf the Web or play games, camera phones are catching on. People are finding reasons to take pictures, whether it's for work or pleasure.

The result, some say, could be a society where cameras become almost as ubiquitous as cell phones. That's already happened in Japan, where cellular camera phones have been around for a few years.

According to researchers at San Francisco's Zelos Group, about one-third of all wireless subscribers will have a camera phone by 2008. That's a marked change from many Americans' current habits. Americans don't do much more than yak on their phones, even though the total number of minutes we spend on them has doubled in the past two years, analysts say.

The only nonvoice service that's really hooked people so far is text messaging. Twenty-two percent of cell-phone subscribers said they use the feature, according to a recent survey by the market research firm TNS Telecoms.

So what makes camera phones so popular?

It could be the convenience. (How many times have you said "Oh, I wish I had a camera?") It could be the novelty. (What says cool like having a camera phone?) But most likely it's the ability to zip pictures to other camera phones, e-mail them or upload them to personal Web pages.

Sprint Vice President Chip Novick said its subscribers shared 10.5 million pictures in the second quarter. And researchers from the Zelos Group say revenue generated from transmitting photos on phones will grow to more than $440 million in 2008, up from about $10.3 million this year.

Companies make money on the camera phones by charging for the service, and sometimes by the number of photos you save on their Internet servers. Uploading pictures to the Internet has become so popular that it's even got a name: moblogging.

The word "blog" itself is short for "Web log," which is a personal Web site full of information posted by users, arranged in chronological order. Blogs can be photo albums, diaries, poetry, work information or just about anything. For instance, numerous blogs dedicated to the Aug. 14 blackout are floating around the Internet, most with camera-phone photos of packed New York streets.

Blogging aside, some people are content just to take photos at concerts.

Mixx Nelson of Canton, Ohio, put his Sprint phone to use at last month's Sprite Liquid Mix concert at the Tower City Amphitheater in Cleveland.

"I wasn't really thinking about it at first, but then I saw the long list of stuff we couldn't have, including cameras," he said, shouting over the music. "I thought (the security) dude was going to take my phone away for a second. But he didn't. I've been taking pictures ever since."

Christi S. Bechtold of Litchfield, Ohio, said wireless companies are missing the boat by targeting users like Nelson. The real market, she said, lies with small business owners who will use camera phones at work.

Bechtold, who runs the custom-cabinet supply company CS Bechtold Designs, said she uses her phone to convey exactly what she's facing at a job site. Sometimes words just won't do when a house's plumbing juts off at weird angles and the cabinet installer needs to know exact dimensions.

With a camera phone, "I can e-mail a picture and call you right back."

Bechtold said she's trying to talk her installers into buying camera phones.