A cultural change driven by camera phones
Saburi's idea was to have users exchange pictures by email, using the SMS services of the phone network. He began working on the project back in 1997, and "the Kyocera visual phone came to the market in 1999, but we had nourished [the idea] for several years before we started development."
Looking back in the historical records 40 years ago, UK banks told John Edwards that no one ever would be interested in carrying a phone around all the time and ultimately denied him a loan to develop and market his cellphone idea. But Saburi didn't have any such difficulty. "Top management aggressively encouraged us to develop the product. We also believed that such a product would improve Kyocera's brand image."
Saburi's research on how consumers used cameras was a big reason for inventing the camera phone: "The cell phone's strongest feature is its portability. This alone creates the application opportunity for the camera phone: We imagined that users are likely to accept the minor weight addition of a camera in a cell phone and carry around 'weightless' photo albums to enjoy with friends. But they do not use heavy cameras or bring along traditional physical photo albums all the time. A cell phone with a camera and color display provided a completely new value for users: It could be used as a phone, a camera and a photo album. This is also where we started from a marketing point of view. From a technical view, we were also confident that we could develop such a device. The approach was to combine an existing teleconference system and a primary wireless data transmission technology."
The phone was a quick success in Japan and was the beginning of a cultural change in how phones were used. "After the release of Kyocera's visual phone for DDI pocket, now Willcom, and J-phone, now Vodafone K.K., introduced the service "SHA-mail" ["photo mail"], which greatly contributed to boost the sales of camera-installed cellular handsets in Japan. SHA-mail greatly changed Japanese telecommunication culture. A key factor to support the boom of camera-installed handsets was in my opinion the evolution of the camera module. We saw remarkable downsizing of the modules, the quality and function were amazingly improved - to a level that was almost equal to digital cameras."
As you can imagine, squeezing a camera into a phone wasn't easy. Saburi remembers plenty of challenges. "I remember that I had discussions with R&D staff, project members and top management several road blocks we came across - again and again. What is the best angle for camera mounting? How can we improve the data transmission speed for minimizing the time lag while talking? What is the best balance of the image quality and frame rate? What about the battery? We faced a pile of challenges that we had never had before." About a dozen engineers worked on the key technologies, taking about two years to build the first model.
Today, Saburi is in charge of Kyocera's cell handset R&D, and he is working on phones with auto focus and 3 megapixel resolution. "In Japan, we are currently enjoying taking pictures and playing music on our cell phones. We can even make payments with our handsets, just like you use a credit card. We call this the 'osaifu-keitai' function. My guess is that the next big thing would happen after a seamless ubiquitous network environment is established."
I asked Saburi if there is anything he could change about mobile phones and the way we use mobile phones, what would it be? "We should not forget the key function of phones. Cellular telephones enable us to communicate with anyone, at anytime, from anywhere. This is the strongest feature of cell phones. We should focus much more on this feature of communication, which would allow us to extend battery life. How much fun would it be, if we could enjoy endless multi-communication, without having to worry about the battery? Of course, this is my personal opinion. I myself prefer the simple cell phone models that focus on just the communication feature."
And there you have it, the ultimate irony: the inventor of the camera phone, for all his influence over how technology is used, is the ultimate cell Luddite! I hope you enjoyed our journey to the heart of this innovative technology as much as I did.
