Cameraphone Photo-Sharing Declines

According to TWICE, a recent study suggests that phone-based photo-sharing is declining:

Camera Phone Image Sharing on Decline
By Greg Scoblete -- TWICE, 4/6/2007 9:24:00 AM

Jackson, Mich. -- Despite a sharp uptick in the number of households with camera phones, fewer consumers than ever are sharing their camera phone images, according to a new study from the Photo Marketing Association.

In a January survey canvassing 5,985 families, 35 percent reported owning a camera phone, up from 26 percent in the previous year. Of that figure, only 24 percent reported sharing images via e-mail or wireless transmission, down from 28 percent in 2005 and 36 percent in 2004.

The percent of camera phone owners who print their images was unchanged at 4 percent.

More than 80 percent of camera phones on the market are under 2-megapixels, PMA said.

I see two likely reasons for this trend (if it is, indeed, an actual trend). First, cameras are increasingly found in all manner of phones, from the priciest smartphones to the freebie disposables you get with a new contract. That means a wider variety of individuals are using cameraphones. So, given that a camera in one's phone may be a new feature to many who have it now for the first time, they may be less familiar and less likely to use it. Also, many who now have cameraphones got the phone with no intention of using the camera function -- it just happened to have a camera in it. Both of these user demographics factors would tend to lower the percentage of cameraphone owners who actually share photos with the cameraphones.

Second, and perhaps more sinister, is how difficult, cumbersome, and unpleasant most carriers have made it to actually share photos using their cameraphones. Take Sprint, for example. In order to share a photo from my phone, I have to submit it through the Sprint's proprietary Picture Mail service. Once uploaded, say, via MMS, the recipient gets a text message pointing him to a URL (yes, a website!) at which the photo can be viewed. This requires starting an actual web browser and burning through lots of overhead packets downloading things like menus, background images, etc. Despite having a perfectly good MMS application in my Treo and my wife's Treo, both on Sprint, we can't simply MMS a photo to each other. Instead, it either has to go through Sprint's craptastic Picture Mail service, or we just have to email it as an attachment. Instead of simply using the functions that most phone-makers have already embedded in the handsets themselves, carriers' desire to control every aspect of the usage experience generally tends to harm the user's experience and destroy value for their customers.

While the demographic trend may ultimately push these numbers down fairly low, the carriers could easily help reverse the trend somewhat by opening up picture-messaging the same way that most have done with SMS/text messaging. Open standards promote use and foster innovation, both of which benefit the carriers nearly as much as they benefit their customers.