iPhone is the Most Popular Camera on Flickr

Flickr offers a handy tool called Camera Finder, that keeps track of the overall user percentages of each camera model. According to The Los Angeles Times, iPhone has passed Canon’s EOS Digital Rebel XTi (aka EOS 400D) and other high-performance cameras (e.g. Nikon D80 & Canon EOS 40D), and shots up to No. 1 as the most wide-used camera among Flickr users. For starter, Flickr, owned by Yahoo!, is one of the most popular online photo sharing and management websites hosting over 3.6 billion images.

As you can see from the chart below, the % of iPhone user (displayed in yellow on the graph) is slightly more than that of Canon’s camera.

Flickr - Camera Finder Graph #1

For a very long time, Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi, which is a digital camera with 10-megapixel lens and optical zoom, has dominated the top spot and been considered as the most popular camera on Flickr. Now, it is replaced by a camera phone with merely 2-megapixel (or 3-megapixel for iPhone 3GS), no zoom, and mediocre image quality.

I’m not too surprised by the result and I think iPhone will take a wider lead over Canon’s camera with the recent launch of iPhone 3GS. It doesn’t mean people prefer low image quality. Everyone loves high quality and vivid photos. But I think it is the mobile connectivity of iPhone that makes it top Canon’s SLR as the most popular camera. Particularly, iPhone users are normally heavy-consumer of the mobile Internet and regular consumer of other social features such as sharing photo with friends.

Just consider how you upload photos from Canon’s camera. You have to transfer the photos from camera to computer and then upload it to your favorite photo-sharing website. Contrary, how do you do that on iPhone? Simply snap a photo and then upload it straight from iPhone while you’re on-the-go to share with anyone you know. It’s just so simple and handy. This definitely accounts for more photo uploads.

Personally, since upgraded to iPhone 3GS, I use it more often than the old iPhone and is now my primary point-and-shoot camera. The image quality still can’t compare with other digital camera or even other camera phones such as Nokia N95 / 97. But it’s quite enough for snapshot purpose. Most importantly, once I shot any picture, it’s so easy for me to upload it to Facebook or Flickr to share with my friends instantly.

Flickr - Camera Finder #2 As a side note, Apple’s iPhone has also outpaced the share of user uploads compared to other camera phones including Nokia N95/E71 and other Blackberry models. What does that mean to other mobile phone makers? IMO, don’t just focus on boosting the resolution of image. To win the game, you’ll need to offer intuitive way to let people share photos and socialize with their friends. Mobile users are now demanding these features.

What do you think about iPhone’s camera? Are you using it as your primary snapshot camera? As always, I welcome you to share your thought by leaving comment below.

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