At WWDC earlier this month, Apple CEO Steve Jobs proudly pointed out that the iPhone4 was the second most popular camera on Flickr. And it was not just about cameraphones, it was all conventional cameras put together. So the nearest competition for iPhone 4 was the Nikon D90. Well in just a matter of weeks, iPhone 4 has risen above all and is now the most popular camera used to upload pictures on Flickr. Previously all iPhone combined (after the 3GS launch) had the same crown.
Flickr, a Yahoo photo sharing site that is one of the most famous destinations to store and share pictures (I personally use a Pro account) has a public page where it shows popularity of cameras. You can see the page here. Whats even more interesting is the Camera phones division, the 3GS, 3G join the iPhone 4 to take the first 3 spots. So how did Apple iPhone nail such monopoly on Flickr despite having poor cameras when compared to the competition?
There are many factors here, I believe the most important of these would be the fact that Apple’s iOS has amazing web connectivity and apps. We have previously seen the iPhone ruling YouTube as well, why? because the iPhone’s aren’t about raw specifications or super cameras, they are about a beautiful OS+Hardware integration. Don’t get me wrong, people do amazing work on their Android devices as well, but the iPhone takes the cake for being noob friendly. That’s not to say that its not pro enough, but its friendly enough for everyone to use. A larger target market. iOS frustrates a power user (read: open source fans) and they probably have good reasons of that, but you can’t deny that for a regular, simple user, the iPhone 4 just works. And today’s Flickr news is just a testimony to that.
Another little factor that helps iPhone 4 here and to be fair, I should mention this fact, that Apple ships one iPhone a year (the iPhone 4 is would be more than a year older soon though) and that reduces fragmentation, thus adding a lot of numbers to a particular model. But then no other mobile device shows up in the top 5 cameras and the iPod touch again shows up win the camera phone category at number 5 spot, thus just giving one spot to HTC Evo 4G in the top 5. If Facebook releases its figures, it would be much more of a testimony for mobile photography (sharing on FB wall is very popular using apps), but for now Flickr delivers the news.
