Infectious Greed jeers at Kodak's comments that camera phones have deficiencies as "akin to a buggy whip maker saying cars are crap." IG commenter David Bennet waxes even more sarcastic:

Considering the technology for using phone cameras to do things like read bar codes then use blue tooth or some other protocal to communicate with a local computer is already being done in high tech nations (eg. Japan and especially Korea) that people do things like send pictures of things that they are thinking of buying to their spouse, that one can sketch something out and send it in a phone conversation, that a field worker can send a photo of a job to a supervisor or expert...

I mean why would a a billion + people want the capacity to generate want the capacity to generate picture with their primary comunication device?

posted by James DeLong @ 2:52 PM | Wireless

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C|Net says that 180 million Americans now have cell phones. with an average monthly bill of $50.64, of which about $8.61 goes to governments. In 2004, the system added 21.7 million new subscribers.

However, in contrast to the earlier post about the rising number of multi-purpose gizmos, a speaker at the New Orleans wireless said the path to nerd nirvana is not smooth. With respect to camera phones:

Notoriously short camera phone battery life; photo quality, especially in daylight; and the complexity of printing pictures are causing major headaches for the 180 million camera phone owners worldwide, according to [Kodak CEO Dan] Carp.

"These are all warning signs," he said. "If we're not careful, imaging could fade to niche application in phones. Some think it's happening already."

posted by James DeLong @ 2:59 PM | Wireless

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