Seth Weintraub, in his recent blog posting at ComputerWorld, speculates that a) Apple intends to put 3 megapixel imagers in its next-generation iPhone and b) may be planning a re-entry into the digital camera space by creating a 5 megapixel iPod Touch-based camera. According to Weintraub, and the manufacturer’s specifications for the imaging chips, the 5MP camera could create not only 5MP still images, but also HD video at 720p (60fps) or 1080p (30fps).
Weintraub cites a couple of things (job postings, part specs, etc.) which seem to support his hypotheses, but obviously only time will tell.
Since I don’t think it’s controversial that iPhone owners will want future versions of the platform to have better and more powerful imaging capabilities (3MP would seem to be the lowest threshold that would be competitive), the more interesting questions are:
a) will people want an iPod Touch that is first and foremost a camera?
b) would it be profitable for Apple to sell a hybrid digital still/video camera a la the Flip HD (which has sold more than 2 million units since its intro in 2007, and is made by Pure Digital, the company that Cisco bought in March for $590 million in stock), of which the company’s CEO said “We became a profitable business from the day we launched Flip”?
First, let’s look at the question of whether people would want an Apple 5MP camera (assuming Weintraub’s speculations are correct) that is essentially an iPod Touch with a lens? Well, this is just based on my own opinion, empirical data, and no end-user surveys or mass feedback: yes.
Why do I say ‘yes’? Because, while it wouldn’t compete with standalone digicams based either on quality (size of imager, quality of image processing), price (a 5MP iPod Touch would have to be at least $250 and would most likely be $300 or more vs. $100 for a 8MP camera) or brand equity in the digital photography space (Sony, Nikon, Canon, Panasonic, Casio, Olympus, anyone?), it would bring to the market a digital still and video camera that also has mature, highly functional WiFi connectivity built-in, a larger display for viewing photos and controls than is available from Digital Still Cameras, and an ecosystem of directly relevant image editing apps and services which no still camera can access in anything approaching the same breadth. It’s not clear whether this iPod Touch camera would take external memory cards and if so, which ones – that would be a key question that I, as a consumer would ask and want to feel comfortable with.
In short, a consumer who bought an iPod Touch video and still camera would be buying a device that has internet connectivity, music playback capabilities (assuming Apple wouldn’t gut the iPod part of the iPod Touch camera), media handling, and computing and Internet browsing. True the consumer would be paying perhaps 3x the price of a class-leading Sony or Canon digicam which themselves had as much as 2.5x the megapixel count -and though we know that megapixels doth not make the camera great, many consumers still ask first ‘how many megapixels does it have?’- but would be getting a more robust imaging device that is actually a full-blown computing platform that takes pictures. And, remember, that you could geo-tag your images, send them to friends with annotations, and integrate them directly into other areas of your online life directly from the camera platform itself (as Weintraub points out in his blog entry).
As to whether it would be profitable for Apple to sell such a device, I will address this question in the second part of this article, coming soon.
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
