Digital cameras get wireless, social networking connectivity

Korean electronics manufacturer Samsung gave the industry a taste of things to come on Friday, unveiling a portfolio of digital cameras that incorporate social networking tools and wireless connectivity.

The two DualView branded cameras – the TL225 and TL220 – and the CL65 boast GPS and geotagging capabilities, Bluetooth, wifi and DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) connectivity and tools to upload photos or videos direct to popular social networking websites, including Facebook, Picasa, and YouTube.

The DualView devices also feature a 1.5″ LCD on the front of the unit allowing users to take better photos of themselves – an innovation driven by the explosive growth in social networking sites.

With mobile handset sales in decline, mobile operators are using their subsidies to push sales of other consumer electronics devices such as netbooks and e-book readers to help foster mobile broadband subscriptions. Many carriers and device manufacturers have already realised that social networking is also a sure fire way to drive mobile broadband usage and it seems likely that it’s only a matter of time before cellular-enabled digital cameras appear on shelves.

In a recent interview with telecoms.com, Thomas Noren, head of product tine LTE at Ericsson’s Networks business, predicted that the cellular industry will one day manage 50 billion connections across the globe, with each person owning a variety of connected devices. “We’ve started this already, with HSPA broadband modules that we can build into laptops and video cameras and this will continue with LTE. I think it’s important that we can connect numerous devices and machines to other machines or to human beings in a different way to what we’ve seen so far,” he said.