San Diego Magazine / April 2004 / Now Picture This

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Now Picture This

When the Cedar fire swept out of the rural back country and into the city last October, images of the towering flames roaring through Scripps Ranch and leaping the I-15 freeway began appearing on the Internet in a matter of minutes. These dramatic images were not the work of firefighters, law enforcement officers or professional news photographers. They were taken by amateurs using a device whose popularity has already outstripped demand: a camera phone. Cellular telephones with built-in cameras were used to report the fire’s progress ahead of the authorities, and well in advance of the news media. The devices can take still images and, in high-end models, short videos.

Hosting the flood of wildfire images that came pouring in over the ensuing days was textamerica.com, a Rancho Santa Fe startup that offers a service known as a “moblog,” short for mobile Web log. About 75 percent of the photos at the textamerica Web site are from camera phones, which are more convenient to use than stand-alone digital cameras in terms of displaying images on-line, says Chris Hoar, textamerica founder and chief operating officer.

“The picture is sent directly from the phone to a unique address, and it is immediately on-line,” Hoar says, noting that the process does not require a computer. People in their cars were pulling over, snapping pictures and posting them on-line, and it took less than a minute.

It’s not just fires, either. People use the moblog to post pictures of new babies, family gatherings, weddings and holidays. Textamerica’s basic service is free to noncommercial users, with enhanced features offered for a fee. The company is also marketing its moblog platform to corporations and news organizations. In January, the firm announced a deal with SignOnSanDiego.com, the on-line arm of the Union-Tribune Publishing Company, which will use the technology to post images of breaking news submitted by amateur photojournalists.

“After a year of getting the door slammed in our face,” Hoar says, “people are starting to realize camera-phone imaging is not only here to stay, it’s going to be a very big part of everyday life.”

The devices also are used by emergency medical services to transmit pictures of injuries to waiting emergency room staff; by real estate agents to send images of hot properties to their clients; by inspectors and field workers with construction companies; and by aircraft manufacturers to forward images of defects and structural damage to engineers. The trend already has a name: cellphonography.

“Camera phones are one of the few new products that are going to revolutionize communications,” claims Alan A. Reiter, president of the consulting firm Wireless Internet & Mobile Computing in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and author of the on-line Camera Phone Report. As camera phones are used more and more by businesses, there will be a need for more services and software to support it, and that’s where the money will be made, by companies like textamerica, he says.

The devices already outsell digital cameras in some markets. IMS Research estimates that more than 45 million of the 500 million cell phones shipped worldwide last year were fitted with a camera. By 2006, nearly half of all units shipped will have cameras, IMS predicts.

It was a phenomenon that swept through Japan and South Korea last year. Now it has footholds in the United States and Europe, with most major U.S. carriers, including Verizon Wireless and Sprint networks, supporting the technology—and collecting a fee for each photo transmitted.

It’s not just textamerica cashing in locally. A number of companies are producing the camera-phone technology or the devices themselves, not the least of which is Qualcomm. In January, the wireless technology company reported a 46 percent increase in fiscal 2004 first-quarter profits, boosted, in part, by holiday sales of cell phones with cameras. Qualcomm doesn’t make camera phones, but it produces the internal circuitry, or chipsets, for a number of handset manufacturers, including Korea’s Kyocera Wireless and LG Electronics, which have their North American operations headquartered in San Diego.

“The camera capability is absolutely dominating our chipset plans going forward,” says Qualcomm’s Louis Pineda. “We’re seeing the camera becoming more and more a required feature for wireless devices.” By integrating the camera components —automatic focus, zoom, exposure control and white balance—into a single chipset, Qualcomm is able to bring the cost down to a point where even low-end phones will soon have a basic camera embedded in them. The more sophisticated devices will have enhanced mobile video technology that includes video streaming, a camcorder and mobile videoconferencing.

While picture quality is still wanting, image resolution is growing exponentially. This year Kyocera is introducing to the U.S. market a Smartphone with a 1.2-megapixel embedded camera. Images of this size are of sufficient quality for printing and framing. Qualcomm will be offering chipsets supporting 2 megapixels next year and 5 megapixels by 2006.

High-speed wireless data networks are also making the process of sending images quicker. Verizon Wireless launched its broadband wireless network in San Diego in October and is now rolling it out nationwide.

But the ease and immediacy of using camera phones has privacy advocates and lawmakers concerned about these spy-like devices. There are so-called “Peeping Tom” and “video voyeurism” laws in California and other states that prohibit the use of cameras, camcorders and similar devices in situations where there’s a “reasonable expectation of privacy.” The worry is that as these devices become more common and easier to conceal, privacy violations are more likely to occur. Indeed, a Seattle man was recently charged with photographic voyeurism after using a camera phone to snap pictures underneath a woman’s skirt while she shopped in a grocery store.

“Our sense is that the more the camera phones are deployed, the more room for possible abuse,” says Jordana Beebe, communications director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse in San Diego.

Locally, the YMCA has taken a proactive stance and banned camera phones from its facilities, although there have been no incidents reported. State Assemblyman Dario Frommer of Glendale has proposed legislation that would require camera phones manufactured or sold in California to emit a sound of 65 decibels or louder when a picture is taken.

Still, the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks, camera-phone advocates say.

“We’re looking at a world where we will literally have hundreds of millions of people able to instantaneously document an event and send that documentation anywhere in the world. That changes things,” says Reiter, who predicts the associated business opportunities will create a billion-dollar industry.

For better or worse, get used to it.