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Why No iCamera?

October 16, 2008 BY Mark Evans

I saw a commercial last night for Nikon Coolpix digital cameras, which are pretty cool looking.

The thing that struck me is why isn’t there an equivalent of the iPod in the digital camera market. In many respects, the MP3 and digital camera markets are similar. They both feature devices that have widespread appeal, they’re affordable to most people, and useful as an every day tool.

As much as the iPod is a marketing and design phenomena, why hasn’t a digital camera maker at least captured the point-and-shoot market? There’s some great designs out there and amazing technology, particularly how video has become so easy to do.

Maybe the digital camera market is too competitive or too commoditized or perhaps not as sexy as the MP3 market. That said, it does make you think about what impact Apple would have if it unveiled an iCamera that also happened to play music.

More: At the very least, I’d love to see Apple introduce a peripheral so you could turn add a camera to an iPod Touch.

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  • E Guy

    iPhone has a low end camera. I am sure a low end video capture device is the next piece of functionality to be added (similar to the mino flip video capability)…

  • Paulo

    Apple missed the boat with the 2nd gen iPhone. If they had included a better camera — 5 MP, for example, like the N95 — it would be a killer multimedia device.

    Maybe this will be in the next gen (likely at least a year out). I do like your idea of a camera add-on to the iPod Touch, which would make it an extremely valuable add-on for people who do not want the cost or extra features of phone.

  • Paulo

    I know cost is a factor in building in a 5MP camera, so maybe they could have done this by having a 2nd iPhone model, say the iPhone Pro?

  • http://adamczar.tumblr.com Adam

    My mom is buying my grandmother a digital camera for Christmas, and since I am her “tech support” guy I am dreading that day. I’m with you… there needs to be a digital camera out there as intuitive, mainstream, and as easy to use as the iPod, complete with a program that operates much like iTunes but would instead automatically import and catalog photos which should could even order prints from. I know software exists like that today, like “Kodak Easy Share,” but I’ve found those programs to be largely bloatware.

    The more I think about this, you have a great point here.