Monday, September 21, 2009

1 or 2 Cameras ? that's the question

Everybody knows how one of the most promising features of 3G technology, the videocall was not successful. Carriers, with initial limited 3G capacity launched low profile the videocall, it was more related to say "we have videocall" rather than "videocall is powerful, use it". Initial prices were too high and the person to person videocall is not really "the killer application".
A lot of services can be deployed using Videocall, IVVR (video IVR), user generated content for enterprise use cases, online journalism, multimedia blogging, law enforcement use cases and also social media interaction. But the initial "not correct promotion" just discouraged solution developers from innovating based on mobile video. The point is that as videocall/videoShare was not being used, right now, in order to reduce the cost of the handsets, the 3G devices are missing the front camera, not only useful for videocall/IMS_videoshare features but also for well known applications being ported to mobile.
When mobile bandwidth & stability capacity is ok, and some carriers (as 3G in UK) are welcoming 3rd Party VoIP/ToIP communication applications as Skype, now it is time to reconsider that the front camera is really a need, not only to use properly videocall and IMS videoshare, but also be used in traditional full multimedia and UC conceived applications.
In our opinions it makes no sense to add megapixels to the main camera, (not usefull when the device has not the zooming and optics of a photo-camera device) and remove from the design the front camera.
Just a mere example, when using a mobile to live broadcast a breaking new, the online journalist will need to appear him/herself during moments, and later...be streaming what is happening.

Carriers can still monetize videocall/videoshare when using them for added value use cases and other front camera based apps can help to monetize boost data plans.

Hope carriers and device suppliers reconsider this...WE WANT BOTH CAMERAS !!!

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