Bruno Giussani is a writer, the European Director of the 
The ubiquitous cameraphone
Cameraphone statistics - according to market researcher NPD Group: In 2005, over 90% of all mobile phones sold in Asia, 64% of those sold in Europe and 45% in the US had an embedded camera. (via Picturephoning)
The day is fast approaching when we will walk into someone's digital eye just by leaving home. Some (Peter Gabriel and Jamais Cascio for ex) regard cameraphones with hopeful eyes; others raise privacy concerns (such as Samsung, the manufacturer that first introduced cameraphones and then banned them from its factories).
Earth Policy Institute figures show China having 269 million cell phones in 2003 (someone must have more recent figures?), a nearly 40-fold increase in 7 years. During that period the number of U.S. cell phones climbed from 44 to 159 million. So China now has more cell phones than there are people in the U.S. (298 million and ticking - but we can figure the Chinese have been buying cell phones faster than Americans are having babies). Chinese government efforts to curtail search engines and blogging will have a tough time keeping ahead of cameraphone users.
Posted by: ellenwallace | March 06, 2006 at 11:41 AM
http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update45.htm - sorry, eant to include that
Posted by: ellenwallace | March 06, 2006 at 11:42 AM