Phototalk: "...that over 800 million camera phones will be sold worldwide between 2003 and 2008 (market research firm Strategy Analytics),
...that camera phones are going to replace low- and mid-sized comsumer digicams ("Sony has already ceded the low-end digital camera market to camera phones", see below)
...that 2 Mpixel phones appear early next year and 5 Mpixel versions after them (Link)
...that 312 billion digital images a year will be captured, stored or shared in 2008 (Gregg Patterson, a vice president in HP's printing and imaging division; Link)"
Refering to Photographs and Memories article: "The immense popularity of the cameraphone may ultimately signal - like the ascendance of reality TV - a victory of content over art, or message over medium. Sure, we'll get a whole lot more well-documented car crashes. But our experience of photography may be reduced from moments of inspired awe to ephemeral voyeuristic gaping.
". (Follow up discussion)
Nonono. I think he's missing the point. The value in photographs lies in the sharing (the stories, not just the pictures themselves), not in the "inspired awe". Sharing is the challenge with digital pictures.
I'm sure you've had a family scene where you page through photo albums with your grandma or something. That experience is what it's about. Not looking at a picture and going: "Wow!". That's not it. (I was trained as a professional photographer.) It's about sending a picture of your baby to your mom (their grandma) with your picturephone and talking about it for a few minutes. Sharing.