I was packing for my trip back east right before Christmas and couldn’t find my digital camera which I hadn’t used in a while, and something dawned on me—I hadn’t used my digital camera in a looooong while.
I used to pack my digital camera on trips because I knew I’d be taking a lot of pictures. Then I stopped. Half the time I’d end up leaving the camera in my bag while I was on the trip because I didn’t want to carry it along with my phone. This time I didn’t take it at all.
For some reason, Americans like me have been slow on the uptake with this. I’m not sure why, but camera phones are more popular in the rest of the modern world than they are in North America. (As a person’s main camera, I’m talking about.)
According to InfoTrends, about 300 million smartphones shipped in 2010—a number that could be over a billion by 2015. A big reason? The cameras. Smartphones include cameras that now take pictures that are comparable to the small digital cameras everyone was buying a couple years ago (including me).
“The mobile imaging experience has benefitted tremendously from recent improvements in camera phone and smartphone technology,” said InfoTrends Senior Research Analyst Carrie Sylvester. “The continued evolution of these products will stimulate use of photo-related features. It will also encourage upgrades and purchases of newer and better devices as they hit the market.”
Just as a comparison, the digital camera I bought four years ago is 7.1 megapixels. The camera in the smartphone I bought a year and a half ago is 3 megapixels. At the time, the 7.1-megapixel camera was decent, as was the 3-megapixel smartphone camera (although some smartphones already had 8-megapixel cameras).
And it still made sense to me to have both a camera and a phone. But I’ve been getting away from that, as more people in North America probably are (even though my phone doesn’t always take stellar pictures).
Today, the average $300 digital camera is somewhere between 8 and 12 megapixels. The average smartphone camera is about 8, with a couple manufacturers having released 12-megapixel cameras in their smartphones. (Nokia made a short film using its N8 phone.)
I’m not exactly sure why North Americans are behind the times on this, but it seems we’re starting to catch up. I am. And I’m pretty sure my next phone will have an 8-megapixel camera at least. And I’ll be leaving my digital camera home for good.
