Watch This 2001 BBC News Report on the Emerging Camera Phone Market
A classic news report produced by the BBC in 2001 on the coming of smartphone cameras has resurfaced.
The journalists behind the news piece made 22 years ago — not that long after digital cameras had replaced film cameras — would not have known just how popular smartphone cameras would become — supplanting both digital and film cameras in sales.
When BBC reported camera phones back in 2001 pic.twitter.com/FdJctyydVW
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Newsreader Darren Jordon amusingly opens the piece with, “The craze for sending text messages shows no sign of abating.” Safe to say the “craze” is still not slowing down.
Back at the start of the millennium, phones sending pictures was a far-out concept but one that most people were keen to get their hands on.
The report said that phone sales were expected to be slow for the coming Christmas so the phone industry is turning to cameras as a new “gimmick.”
A reporter shows a Nokia 7650, which slid open to reveal a camera — a design that didn’t catch on.
“The idea is that wherever you are — at Buckingham Palace or on the bus home — you can send your friends and family a photo with a message attached,” says the reporter.
Last year, a study carried out by a British photo store found that 92.5 percent of all photos are now taken with smartphones. A whopping 1.8 trillion photos are taken every year which equates to five billion a day or 57,246 photos taken per second.
An estimated seven billion photos are shared each day on WhatsApp alone. But, in the early 2000s, only certain networks allowed photos to be sent and the carrier companies charged exorbitant fees.
PetaPixel featured a video of Colombian pop star Shakira’s shocked reacting to a phone camera in Japan also in 2001. In the clip, The Hips Don’t Lie singer is visibly blown away by the technology — in what was clearly the first time she had ever seen such a device.
“This one doesn’t work in America, no? Thank god, because imagine all the paparazzo,” she says while inspecting the device.
Little did she know that TMZ journalists would be running around Hollywood equipped with smartphone cameras in the coming years.
Image credits: BBC News
