The camera in the phone...

Did you every wonder how the cell phone companies came up with the idea of introducing a camera in the phone ? Alexander Graham bell would probably never would have imagined in his wildest dreams that the device he created for the purpose of communication, would one day be also be used for photography. The two seem to be very different applications. In hindsight, and with the success of the camera phones, it does seem an intelligent move by cell phone companies to include this application with your phone. However, what I am really interested is in understanding what would have the conversation looked like when in the board room of a cell company someone came up with the idea of packaging a camera(and that also a very low quality one to start with) with the device. There would have been arguments like, “why would someone who wants to make a call, be interested in a camera that takes postage size photographs ? (It’s seems that the idea of mouse as an input device to computers was something that was first proposed to the Xerox board, who rejected it as being frivolous)“ Some one else may have put another point across in favor. A deviant from the natural evolution of the product. I mean, you could add a bigger address book, voice activated calling, speaker phone, backlit LCD display, black&white to color display, password protection for calling specific numbers, barring specific calls, needing a password to receive calls from specific numbers, programming to automatically call specific set of numbers at specific times and speaking a pre-recorded message, call forwarding, programming to send a busy tone to specific set of numbers and so on…but, having a camera on the phone ? Give me a break !!

Obviously, someone was not thinking on the same lines and so we had the camera in. Looking back, if I try analyze the reason for success of camera phones, it looks to me that the mobile phone was transforming from a simple communication device to a much more personal device. The personalization was boosted due to the mobility aspect of the mobile phone. Why is the landline phone not a personal device ? Because, it cannot be carried in your pocket with you all the time. The same set is used by all members of the family. For the mobile phone, you may want to use your choice of ringtones, wall paper, skin covers, User interface themes , just to suit your tastes(also note that there is a whole entertainment industry that has evolved around providing content around these features on mobile phones). You don’t share this device with anyone else the way you used to share your landline phone of yesteryears. So, the phone was transitioning from a simple communication device to a personal entertainment device. In that sense , including a camera in that package made sense. Then with the introduction of mms (multi media services) by cell phone operators, people could relate to the camera as another communication feature by capturing and sending the images.

No matter what , I still find it very fascinating on how something like a camera could be imagined on an extension of a device that Alexander Graham Bell produced and be such a huge success. Can you think more examples of such “radical innovations” ?