iPhone Surpassing Competition on Flickr, and What it All Means.

I noticed that most of the major tech blogs today are reporting on the fact that the iPhone is about to surpass, or has indeed already surpassed the Canon EOS Rebel XTi as the most popular camera in the Flickr community. First off, I think it’s pretty amazing that the Canon EOS Rebel XTi has been so wildly popular, pretty impressive. But secondly, the iPhone has fortunately or unfortunately changed the way photography will be looked at by the vast majority of folks for the foreseeable future. Now, Flickr is looping together all iPhones of course, but undoubtedly it won’t be long till this number reflects the success of the iPhone 3GS which features a much improved camera for one and improved camera function (point to focus!) that even the camera makers haven’t seem to have thought of.

A year ago I would have bemoaned this trend, the older iPhone takes pretty crappy pictures (journalistic term?) and clearly any compact would be a better solution to taking pictures. The 3GS has changed all that, it actually takes pretty good pictures, and with the added ability of permanent connection to the internet (and video), how many people are going to want to spend an additional $100-300 on a much bulkier electronic device that only takes pictures? It really doesn’t make a lot of sense, logically, does it? Of course not helping is the lack of innovation in compact cameras, in recent years the focus has been on megapixels, and I’m not sure much has changed, I mean what’s next? A camera with an LCD on the front and back of the camera!?

I can’t say I predicted any of this, I mean it wasn’t all that long ago that cell phones were pretty crappy too, but I suppose it was just a matter of time till somebody got it all right, a computer in your pocket, that’s also your phone, and takes pictures, that doesn’t have to be connected to another computer, because it already is a computer (remember?). Oh by the way, it also happens to be connected to the internet, and seems to be able to access various social sharing sites like Flickr and Facebook with just a couple of taps. It comes with gigabytes of storage, and the whole device appears to be a LCD display.  Or you could spend $200 on a device that takes arguably better pictures, then spend some money on memory, a computer if you don’t have one, take some pictures, turn the camera off, connect a cable, turn the camera on, open a program and transfer the photos, and finally then upload those photos to Flickr. You can do all that, or get the iPhone.

With all that, of course the iPhone is on its way to world domination, not to mention, is it any wonder compact sales are down?

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