While sales growth of camera-phones in North America remains explosive, the market is currently driven by Push marketing strategies, namely subsidized sales of camera-phones by carriers. Lively discussions at the recent Mobile Imaging Summit North America (October 28 & 29, 2004) focused on what's necessary to switch the growth engine to customer Pull in order to grow the Mobile Imaging 'pie' for all concerned. Generating downstream revenues from images captured with the camera-phones is central to generating profits in areas beyond components and devices, and ultimately to the health of the entire ecosystem. This report summarizes discussions at the Summit and provides the recommendations of our analysts concerning actions needed to generate regular use by the general public of the camera functions in their phones: evolving the devices to optimize them for image capture without compromising their communications capabilities; achieving image quality that meets consumer expectations within the specific constraints of camera-phones; and overcoming current bottlenecks to easy transfer of image data among devices in the imaging value chain.
