'Cricket' poses a threat to the mobile wallpaper business

The popularity of mobile phones equipped with cameras has dramatically reduced the revenue of the mobile device graphics business.

Analyst M: Metrics said more and more users prefer to use cameras available on mobile devices, rather than paying for content from service providers.

This means that the content service providers will have to try very hard to attract customers to use their services.

But for mobile network service providers, the situation is not so bad. Customers are still willing to pay for data and picture messaging services.

Too common

M: Metrics's research shows that only 20% of Europeans and 14% of Americans are willing to pay for data and picture messaging services.

Sending images or videos is still the most popular mobile data service with 30% of mobile phone users regularly using this service to send content to other users, emails or blogs.

Of the four mobile phone users in Europe, three have telephones. The US market now has 160 million camera phone users - the equivalent of half of the country's mobile phone users.

" It is rare for us to meet a cell phone without a camera today. Camera phones now compete with digital cameras ," said Ben Wood, director of research firm CCS Insight.

Cell phones equipped with cameras have achieved a surprising growth rate. The first camera phone to appear on the market is the Sony Ericsson T68. This "phone" was released in March 2002.

Even in the following year Sony Ericsson launched the T610 - a mobile phone with a built-in camera. By the fall of 2004 Samsung has launched the first mobile phone with a 5 "dot" camera. So far up to 10 "dots".

"People's journalist"

Multimedia messaging services have not developed according to the expectations of mobile network service providers. But the popularity of social networking sites like MySpace and Flickr has helped increase the number of users who use mobile phones to send images from those sites.

Image sharing has now become a feature of advanced mobile phones. Sony Ericsson K800, for example, includes photo sharing via Flickr.

Mr. Wood said that feature has facilitated the development of "people journalists". Mobile phone users have taken and sent many pictures of famous events to the world.

Mobile network service providers are increasingly supporting users with lower data rates. Meanwhile, device manufacturers are increasingly incorporating more capabilities to share images with more websites.

Mr. Wood predicts that within three years, the photo sharing service between mobile phones and websites will explode.

Hoang Dung