Camera Phone Ownership and Usage Rising?

In recent years the mobile phone industry has been trying to diversify its revenue stream by offering a mutitude of services in addition to traditional voice callings. The “killer app” almost every mobile operator and handset maker embraced was cameraphones, but the industry has generally been a little underwhelmed by consumers’ response: recent studies indicate as few as 28 percent of cameraphone users send picture messages with their cameraphones, and finds customers aren’t rushing to embrace high-end data and media services.

Well, on the cameraphone front, maybe it’s a question of whether the viewfinder is 70 percent empty or 30 percent full. Mobile research firm M:Metrics studied cameraphone usage in he U.S., Germany, France, and the U.K. and finds that not only is cameraphone ownership rising (try buying a cell phone without a camera, these days!) but usage is also increasing with summer vacation season, particularly among folks whose cameraphones offer resolutions of one megapixel or more. According to M:Metrics, 50.7 percent of mobile subscribers in the four countries studied now own camera phones, an increase of 22 percent since February 2006. Some 30.5 percent of cameraphone users have sent a photo over the network – a figure not much different than the 28 percent reported elsewhere – but 44.3 percent of people using cameraphones with a resolution of one megapixel or more have sent a picture over the network. In other words, you’re more likely to send photo messages if your phone takes high quality pictures.

Overall, M:Metrics found that text messaging is the most popular non-voice application on mobile phones, although Americans lag far behind Europeans, with only 36.9 percent of U.S. mobile phone users reporting they’ve sent a text message, compared to nearly 70 to 85 percent of Europeans surveyed. But some 3.2 percent of American phone users report they’ve purchased wallpapers or screensavers for their phones: the number never goes about 2.8 percent in European countries surveyed.

Overall, M:Metrics found the Motorola RAZR is the most popular cameraphone in the U.S. and U.K., while the Nokia 6230 won out in Germany and French users like the Sagem my X-5. However, Nokia phones seem to convert more users into customers who pay to send photos from their phones: the top photo-sending phones are the Nokia 6630 in France, the Nokia 6280 in Germany, and the Nokia 6111 in the United Kingdom. What’s the top picture-sending phone in the U.S.? The Danger Sidekick II.

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