Ericsson constantly conducts worldwide consumer research to find out what kinds of application consumers want and how they want to use them. Besides making phone calls, imaging and messaging are on the tops of consumers wish lists for future mobile applications. Until now, imaging has mostly consisted of images and graphics that are displayed on Web pages. But because imaging will become a natural part of mobile services, image flow and digital-imaging requirements will change. Imaging is not an application, but it will be an integrated part of Ericsson s product offerings and solutions.
Messaging is one of the most important applications that use images.
For example using a terminal, such as the one in Figure 1 envision taking photos of a hotel room when you are on a business trip, and sending them to your family, along with messages that say miss you. From consumers perspectives, these applications will symbolize the third-generation regardless of underlying technology. The roadmap toward imaging in the third-generation starts with MMS in generation 2.5. When we talk about imaging as a very important part of future mobile applications, we have to acknowledge that mobile phone users must somehow capture images. A natural way of doing this is to integrate a digital still-image camera into mobile phones, which would enable them to capture and send images and messages from the same phone.