Worldwide Camera Phone Installed Base Tops 1.5 Billion in 2010

Lyra Research: Camera phones have now become the most prevalent image-capture devices in the world. The global installed base of camera phones has now surpassed that of film and digital cameras combined. Lyra estimates that the installed base of camera phones will reach approximately 850 million units in 2006, and this number is expected to grow to more than 1.5 billion units in 2010 (see figure).

This camera phone market forecast is the latest addition to Lyra's Consumer Imaging Intelligence service. The complete forecast includes projections of camera phone unit shipments by sensor resolution and the numbers of images being captured, saved, and printed from this nascent class of devices.

In less than five years since the very inception of this product category, camera phones have gone from nonexistent to predominant. We're still in the early stages of market development for mobile imaging. Picture quality is still immature, and market penetration has largely been supply-side driven. But camera phone picture quality will improve substantially over the next several years, upstream transmission bandwidth will increase, and consumers will become increasingly familiar with the incredible inherent benefit of wireless connectivity for images.

Consumer Imaging Intelligence service Publ 20060707