Going Out On A Limb: Camera Phones Will Catch On
For obvious reasons, I don't put much weight into analyst reports predicting markets. They almost always take a current trend and extrapolate it out beyond what's reasonable. At the same time, they almost never go back and look at how far off they are when they hit the dates in their predictions. Instead, they just put out a new report a year later with new numbers, pushing the "deadline" out another year as well. It's a good gig if you can get it, but the accuracy can be questioned. That said, IDC is now saying that camera phones are expected to catch on. They are wondering, though, if it's just a novelty. I think that too many reports about camera phones focus on how it's a "camera" on a phone, and not how combining a camera and a phone let you do certain things that you can't do with either alone. It's that combination that's going to attract new and different uses and make people want to buy camera phones.
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