Infotrends sees "Death of Film"

INFOTRENDS Research announced at the ImageScape Press event at FlashForward, a CES event, that digital has overtaken film camera sales, with 42% of US households projected to own at least one by the end of 2004—up from just 20% in 2000. The number of digital cameras has been boosted strongly by camera phones, which now lead as the device of choice for most North Americans. Still, Infotrends says, there's a long way to go.

Most people don't have time to figure out the features of their cameras, and adoption rates seem to be skewed towards the simplicity of camera phone options. Most people take 23 pictures per month on average, says Infotrends, and picture exchange becomes common—once people figure out how to transfer images to and fro (nothing new here).

One of the sponsors of the event, mediaGear, showed a new device that's designed to also aid digital camera users—PC-less, internal-PC, or USB-connected flash reader/writers. These devices, which resemble high-tech (read satin silver finish) books, contain slots for practically all of the modern type of digital camera media and can use Compact Flash (Type I & II), MicroDrives, MemoryStick (MS and Pro), SmartMedia, SecureDigital, MultiMediaCard, and eXtremeDigital from a single device—then burns the images to a PC or Mac-readable CD-R/W. A variant, the Flash-HD series uses a single button push to read an entire media card to itself, then one simply connects the drive to a PC as a ‘standard' USB drive if desired.

Their final device is a USB media container/player that can take media such as SmartMedia, encapsulate it, and then allow the device to be connected to a PC or Mac via USB. They suggest as a great way to re-use the often undersized media that comes with most digital cameras. The kicker: it's US$9.95. µ