Word: i700
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Because of the i700's relatively high price (competing digital cameras with the same resolution sell for as little as $800), Ricoh expects its first U.S. customers to be business users, such as real estate agents making Web pages for new listings or news organizations posting photos of fast-breaking stories from the field. In Japan, the government-contracted information service Hokuriku Kensetsu Kosaikai uses the cameras to collect pictures from scenes of natural disasters to help repair workers and rescue teams prepare for the task ahead of them. "We used to use a PC, but not all the workers...
Research firm InfoTrends in Boston estimates that more than 80 million people worldwide will be transmitting digital images on the go by 2004. While some will do this using cameras like the i700, others will use cell phones with built-in lenses or handheld PCs with camera attachments. Low-cost camera sensors can be added to a cell phone for as little as $30. In Japan, a cell phone released by J-Phone this fall includes a built-in digital camera that lets users snap low-resolution photos of themselves, then e-mail them to friends. In the U.S., people...
...i700 has room for other enhancements. "Things need to be simplified," says InfoTrends analyst Michelle Lampmann. "There needs to be an invisible solution where it's just snap and share, like setting a VCR." For example, a standard operating system, like the Palm OS, could make the i700 a real alternative to Net-enabled smart phones or handhelds...
...This is first-generation technology," says Vincent Palmieri, Ricoh's U.S. director of electronic commerce. Currently the i700's address book lets people store up to 50 e-mail addresses, but future versions may include a full-featured address book for phone numbers and addresses, he says. The camera's 8MB of internal storage could be beefed up to make room for more productivity applications and games. The i700's PC Card and CompactFlash slots on the side of the unit leave plenty of room for add-ons and software upgrades...
Someday consumers may be able to custom-select the features they want in their personal wireless device. Whether or not the i700 becomes a popular favorite like cell phones and handheld PCs, its release makes clear for the first time that the ability to send and receive images is an integral part of that future...