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Camera megapixels: Why more isn't always better (Smartphones Unlocked)

2012-10-10T04:06:00.000-07:00

It's time to forget megapixels as the measure of smartphone camera performance and pick a new yardstick.

Just days ago, Samsung announced the Samsung Galaxy S III, the global, quad-core, Android Ice Cream Sandwich successor to its best-selling smartphone ever, the Galaxy S II.

CNET readers' reactions were mixed, with several comments that the 8-megapixel camera didn't seem too hot.

Rumors of a 12-megapixel camera leading up to the announcement were partly to blame. It's no wonder that some felt that a perfectly good 8-megapixel spec was taking a step back, especially with the 16-megapixel shooter on the HTC Titan II out in the wild, and Nokia's 41-megapixel 808 PureView, a Mobile World Congress stunner.

Despite the fact that 8 megapixels is pretty standard for a high-end smartphone camera these days, one CNET reader described the Samsung Galaxy S III's camera as "so last year." Never mind that at least one high-end phone, like the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, still touts a 5-megapixel camera.

It isn't that 5-megapixel cameras can't be good, even better than phones with an 8-megapixel count lens; or that we're due for another bump along the megapixel scale. It's that to many shoppers, 5 megapixels just doesn't sound as good as 8, even if the camera produces terrific, knock-your-socks-off shots. And well, if 8 is good, then 12 is better.

The dirty secret lurking behind today's 8-megapixel yard stick for high-end status (and what any photography nut will tell you) is that the megapixel number alone is a poor way to predict photographic performance.

For instance, the original Samsung Focus took some lovely shots on its 5-megapixel camera, while the Motorola Droid Razr's 8-megapixel lens creates disappointing pictures. And the 5-megapixel camera on Apple's iPhone 4 beat out some 8-megapixel cameras on the market and delivered good low-light results.

Of course, that's not to say that bigger can't also be sometimes better. For instance, HTC's One X high-performance 8-megapixel smartphone camera boasts rapid shot-to-shot action, and its Titan II takes 16-megapixel shots of solid quality.

So what's the formula for fantastic photos? It involves an entire camera module that includes not just the size and material of the main camera lens, but also the light sensor behind it, the image processor, and the software that ties it all together.

Camera megapixels: Why more isn't always better (Smartphones Unlocked)

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The fallacy of megapixel - megapixels camera

2012-10-10T04:02:00.000-07:00

Internet Giant Social Media - The fallacy of megapixels

You can start to see that cramming more pixels onto a sensor may not be the best way to increase pixel resolution.

Jon Erensen, a Gartner analyst who has covered camera sensors, remembers when the cell phone industry jumped from 1-megapixel to 2-megapixel sensors.

"They would make the pixel sizes smaller [to fit in more pixels]," Erensen told me over the phone, "But keep the image sensor the same." Erensen similarly used the water analogy, this time swapping "buckets" for "wells."

What ended up happening is that the light would go into the well and hit the photo-sensitive part of the image sensor capturing the light. So if you make the wells smaller, the light has a harder time getting to the photo-sensitive part of the sensor. In the end, increased resolution wasn't worth very much. Noise increased.

The relationship between the number of pixels and the physical size of the sensor is why some 5-megapixel cameras can outperform some 8-megapixel cameras, and why we may not see, or want, a 12-megapixel camera on a smartphone. A slim smartphone limits the sensor size for one, and moving up the megapixel ladder without increasing the sensor size can unnecessarily degrade the photo quality by letting in less light than you could get with slightly fewer megapixels.

Then again, drastically shrunken pixel sizes aren't always the case when you increase your megapixels. HTC's Bjorn Kilburn, vice president of portfolio strategy, did share that the pixel size on the 16-megapixel Titan II measures 1.12 microns whereas it measures 1.4 microns on the One X's 8-megapixel camera. CNET's Josh Goldman points out that this is a small pixel size; however the take-away in terms of this discussion is that the two similar sizes mean that photo quality should be comparable at a pixel-by-pixel comparison.

Unfortunately, most smartphone-makers don't share granular detail about their camera components and sensor size, so until we test them, the quality is largely up in the air. Even if smartphone makers did release the details, I'm not sure how scrutable those specs would be to the majority of smartphone shoppers.

For more information on the interplay between megapixels and sensors, check out the excellent description in CNET's digital camera buying guide.

What about Nokia's 41-megapixel PureView?

Nokia's story behind its 808 PureView smartphone is really interesting. CNET Senior Editor Josh Goldman has written one of the best explanations of the Nokia 808 Pureview's 41-megapixel camera that I've seen. I strongly suggest you read it.

In the meantime, here's a short summary of what's going on.

Juha Alakarhu (pronounce his first name YOO-hah), is head of camera technologies at Nokia, where he works within the Smart Devices team. Alakarhu explained to me that although Nokia has engineered the PureView to capture up to 41-megapixels, most users will view photos as the 5-megapixels default.

Crytek Rasmus Hojengaard on Crysis 3 - Interview at Gameplanet New Zealand

2012-10-10T03:56:00.000-07:00

Gameplanet: Is it necessary for Crysis to be synonymous with pushing the limits of hardware technology?

Rasmus Hojengaard I think we would probably be challenging some of Crytek's pillars if we didn't do that. The value you get from pushing these things is different now from what it was ten years ago. But it's part of our DNA. Even if people aren't conscious about doing it, it'll just happen anyway. There is benefit in it, and there needs to be companies that try to push things, because it sets an example for others to follow and benchmark from, and that rewards the whole industry.

One of the things we're trying to do now is push things we weren't pushing before, but that's not to say we wouldn't push things that haven't part of Crytek's DNA from the start.

Gameplanet: The original Crysis was fairly brutal on PC hardware, are you saying that won't occur with Crysis 3?

Crysis 3's senior creative director Rasmus Hojengaard. Hojengaard: The hardware and software today is a little more structured. DirectX 10 and 11 certainly give us possibilities to streamline things, and scale things in a way that wasn't possible in the original. So yes, we definitely want to have stuff in the game that you need the biggest beast to support fully, but we really want to have medium specifications that support maybe 85, 90 percent of that fidelity, that visual quality. So part of that is making sure that the artwork itself, the art direction itself, is great. That means that even if you can't use all the features, you're still going to get something that looks awesome. It's something that means a lot more to us in this game than it did in previous games.

The answer is yes, we want to do that, but also no, we don't want it to be an elitist type of game where you can't get a good experience without a nuclear power plant.

Gameplanet: The art direction appears pretty diverse, how did you manage to find seven different types of rainforest to depict?

Hojengaard: What we did was we sat down and researched the concepts of the rainforests, and there were a lot more than seven. There were Amazon-type rivers, misty mountain tops, canyons that maybe slope in a different way. Then we'd have to look at which ones potentially could support our gameplay formula, and which ones fit the architectural and geometrical layout of New York City, and that's how we picked the seven different diverse areas.

All this allows changes to gameplay that we didn't have before. We didn't have the ability to almost artificially approach this because we didn't have this setting of being underneath a dome that has its own ecosystem that would affect the world in a way that the sun doesn't. So it's a great marriage of high-tech and low-tech; the low-tech in mother nature taking effect, but it's controlled by high-tech.

We believe the amount we're pushing New York will really resonate with people because it's going to be very clear that we're not cutting any corners by going back to New York again. We're actually putting it in a different context for you, so that people will go, "Wow, I have not seen this with Times Square", or, "Wow, I did not recognise that church, because I didn't realise those spikes aren't actually trees, they're church spires". So that kind of recognition is something that really gives us a unique visual language, and we haven't explored like that before. We've explored those elements before, but not combined them. And it's a lot of research work!

Gameplanet: So how does the nanodome make the interior grow faster?

Hojengaard: Basically this nanotechnology is somehow filtering the light to the surface from the sun, and it's manipulating it and changing the way that it works so that the ecosystem within the dome is very different to what you find outside. It basically just exaggerates what is already there. I can't give you an engineering explanation as to how this works; we'll probably explain in more detail how it works but we're not doing that just yet. But in theory what you get is a potentially naturally occurring thing on speed, if you will. Overgrowth that would normally take hundreds of years happening in 20 years.

This only affects vegetation, so it's not going to change animals, but the distribution of animals will change. Maybe you'll have a hundred frogs instead of five frogs, but it's important for us that it doesn't feel like a fantasy setting. It needs to have tactical elements and a tactical feel to it. So that's kind of how we're defining how far we can push this stuff.

Gameplanet: You were quick to point out the new water features, what kind of work have you done in this area?

Hojengaard: Well, the engine helps, but it's also about picking out very smart ways of creating water drama, like things that flow, and waterfalls. One side of that is technical, of course, but another is just being smart about how you process things. Let me give you an example – I know this isn't Crysis but when you have waterfalls in Skyrim, it's the same technology, so you need to have equal investment in the assets you use to produce this as well as the technology that drives it. So we're focussing on both things, and to be fair, we do have a lot of experience building tropical environments, so we know what we're doing. We're just iterating on that further, and pushing it even more. Later on in the year you'll see examples of that particular thing that are much more evident of what we've done exactly.

Gameplanet: We've seen the new addition to the suit: hacking. Can you give us an example of how this works later in the game?

Hojengaard: I can't give you a complete example, but what I can say though is that the idea is that the complexity should not be in the hacking itself, the complexity should be in what stuff you're hacking, and at what point. It's about the diversity of this and how you use it, rather than how you use each individual thing. We don't want to have a weird mini-game where you have to connect pipes and type a secret number, we want it to be the strategy of hacking. The suit is so technical it would obviously do that for you if you told it what to hack.

It's going to scale a lot, what you saw now is only a small-scale of what this will eventually grow to over the course of the game.

Gameplanet: Being able to shoot out of stealth is also new, what have you added to counteract this ability?

Hojengaard: Well we obviously need to balance this, but one of the ways to do so is to limit the number of arrows you get. We have all the ways to tweak this, one being countermeasures in the enemies' arsenal, another being the location itself, how enemy placement is, or a combination of that in conjunction with countermeasures then obviously how many of these arrows you're going to have to shoot. Plus finding the right balance at each point in the game.

Crytek's Rasmus Hojengaard on Crysis 3 - Interview at Gameplanet New Zealand

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Sean Lahman: Evolution preceded revolution in digital cameras

2012-05-07T02:59:00.001-07:00

Steve Jobs didn’t invent the MP3 player. The Wright Brothers weren’t the first to fly. And the incandescent light bulb had been around in one form or another for 50 years before Thomas Edison came up with his version.

We tend to think of inventors as people who create things that are entirely new, but that’s rarely the case. More often, innovation comes from a series of smaller, incremental improvements.

“That was certainly true in my case,” said James McGarvey, who was honored last week as the Distinguished Inventor of the Year, an award given annually by the Rochester Intellectual Property Lawyers Association.

McGarvey was recognized for his work to invent and commercialize digital single lens reflex cameras (D-SLRs) at Eastman Kodak Co. “The first D-SLR was not a big invention,” he said. “It was a series of small inventions.”

The challenge began when a government client approached McGarvey, asking if he could put Kodak’s one megapixel sensor — used in high-end video cameras — in a 35mm camera body for some sort of covert operation.

“Because I was an avid photographer and a SLR user, I knew how a film camera worked,” he said. “I asked myself, ‘What do I need to make something that works the same way?’ ”

In 1988, McGarvey hand-delivered the top-secret camera (I’m imagining it in a case handcuffed to his wrist) and never saw it again.

He ended up building three more prototypes the next two years and by 1990 began showing those cameras to news photographers at trade shows for feedback. “The reaction was intense,” McGarvey said.

McGarvey was granted patent No. 4,916,476 for that first design, the first of many he received.

The first digital SLR — the Kodak Professional Digital Camera System (DCS) — hit the market in 1991, and was an instant hit.

“The impact of Jim’s work cannot be overstated,” said Kenneth Parulski, chief scientist at Kodak. “Some of the world’s most famous photos, from Super Bowl touchdowns to the 9/11 tragedy, were captured by sports and press photographers using D-SLR cameras that Jim designed.”

McGarvey made tremendous strides in a short period of time, and by the mid-1990s had implemented almost all of the features present in current-day digital cameras. “The only significant addition in the last 15 years has been the ability to shoot movies,” he said.

Sean Lahman: Evolution preceded revolution in digital cameras

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Gadgets drive online ad spend

2012-05-07T02:54:00.003-07:00

The proliferation of digital devices has helped boost online advertising revenue by 19 per cent to $713 million in the March quarter. Online advertising would make up about 22 per cent of total ad revenue by year’s end, Interactive Advertising Bureau Australia chief Paul Fisher predicted.

“We’ve always said the largest single driver is consumer behaviour,” Mr Fisher said.

Advertisers were shifting more of their marketing budgets towards digital platforms as consumers took to online video, social media and “concurrent usage” (using two or more screens from TVs, PCs, smart phones and tablets), he said.

Mr Fisher said online advertising was on track to exceed $3 billion this year. Search and directories remains the dominant category, generating $395.7 million in the March quarter, up 21.4 per cent year-on-year, and representing 55.5 per cent of total online advertising.

Directories, which consists of a minority of the category, grew at a faster rate than search. Industry sources say Google accounts for more than 95 per cent of search revenue. General display advertising was the second-fastest growing category, recording 18 per cent growth to $153.7 million in the quarter and representing 21.6 per cent of total online advertising.

Within the display category, video posted $11.6 million in ad revenue for the quarter, up $0.6 million from the December quarter. However, email-based advertising dropped by $2.6 million to $7 million over the same period.

Motor vehicles continued to be the highest-spending industry sector, generating 20.4 per cent of total online display ad revenue. This was up from 17.4 per cent in the December quarter.

Finance was the second-highest sector, posting 13.3 per cent of total online display, up from 12.9 per cent in the December quarter. Real estate rose from a 7.9 per cent to an 8.4 per cent share, while fast moving consumer goods rose from a 6.8 per cent share to 8 per cent.

Computers and communications was edged out of the top five industry categories, generating 7.2 per cent of general display revenue in the March quarter, down from 9.7 per cent in the previous quarter.

“The retail and government sector online spend continues to flatline, which is surprising given both are facing tough marketing and communications conditions,” Mr Fisher said. “There is a real opportunity for these sectors to invest their advertising budgets online.”

Online classified advertising was the slowest growing of the three main categories, posting revenue growth of 13 per cent for the March quarter year-on-year. Classifieds generated $163.5 million, representing 22.9 per cent of total online ad revenue.

CPM-based pricing (cost per thousand) remained the dominant expenditure type, representing 74 per cent of the total online ad spend, compared to 26 per cent for direct response.

Online advertising seems to be maintaining its growth trajectory. The 19 per cent growth for the 2012 March quarter compares to 17 per cent growth for the first quarters in each of 2011 and 2010.

IAB Australia announced it would release online video measurement data later this year.

Gadgets drive online ad spend

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28,000 phones disconnected for making pesky calls

2012-05-07T02:27:00.000-07:00

Almost 28,000 telephones have been disconnected and over 44,000 notices issued to unregistered telemarketers till April 24 for sending pesky calls and messages, according to the government.

"Government is aware that several calls and SMSs are being sent from private numbers i.e. by subscribers not registered as a telemarketer. 44,810 notices have been issued to unregistered telemarketers and 27,984 telephones have been disconnected till April 24, 2012 since inception of the regulation i.e. Sep 27, 2011," Communications Minister Kapil Sibal said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha.

In order to provide relief to millions of mobile subscribers nagged by telemarketing companies, the government last year brought into force a regulation -- The Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations, 2010 -- barring such communications.

According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), if pesky calls or messages are sent through individual numbers then notice will be served to the customers while the number will be disconnected on second violation.

The guidelines regulating commercial calls levy hefty penalties on offenders including fines ranging from Rs.25,000 to Rs.250,000 depending on the number of times the violation is detected. On sixth violation, the telemarketer's connection is to be terminated and get blacklisted for two years.

All telemarketing firms are now easily identifiable as their phone numbers will hence forth begin with '140'.

To avail the service, customers have to get registered with the National Customer Preference Registry, earlier known as the National Do Not Call registry, by dialling toll free number 1909. They can also send a SMS -- 'start 0' -- to the same number to get registered.

28,000 phones disconnected

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Star Walk - ipad calls interactive astronomy

2012-05-07T02:18:00.000-07:00

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A new ipad calls for a brand new batch of apps that show off the gadget’s new powers –a screen that allows ebooks to be sharper than the printed word. To show off that high-density Ratina display and a fancy new A5X processor, these are the apps you need on your new iPad .......

[[[ Category: Education
Updated: 20 April 2012
Version: 5.7.2
Size: 151 MB
Languages: English, Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Spanish
Developer: Vito Technology Inc.]]]
Requirements: Compatible with iPad.Requires iOS 3.2 or later

Star Walk for $4.99

The astronomy app Star Walk is not a new app but when used on the new iPad it is nothing short of stunning. Star Walk can identify up to 300,000 stars on the iPad’s screen and is ideal for youngsters and adults alike. By simply holding your iPad into the sky, the app labels out the constellations, the solar system, stars, and satellites.

The app also includes a celestial calendar that informs how to plan star gazing by listing events such as full moons, meteor showers and upcoming partial eclipses.

The most interesting feature of the app is the Augmented Reality technique where it overlays data from the app on top of the image (of the sky) as captured by the iPad camera. Using this, user can align the image of the sky with that of the sky in the app.

This helps in pinpointing the position of satellites, finding stars or constellations.

You get the social bragging rights to show off your iPad and how a photo of your current location is overlaid with the app-generated sky, giving you real time results of what is right above you. There are some stunning pictures of the day (sun, etc) that makes for a super high resolution view of a celestial scene.

note :

Winner of Apple Design Award 2010, featured by Apple as Best Apps of 2009, 2010 and in iPad TV commercials***

Mobile fun - Talking comics are here

2012-04-26T05:43:00.000-07:00

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Little Eric does not have to peer into comic books to read the adventures of his hero-Nagraj. He can now lean back and let the comic play itself with sounds and dialogues-on his mobile phone.

Mobile content provider Planet 41 Mobiventures says that it sells as many as 10,000 ‘motion comic’ books per day. It has the rights for mobile versions of titles offered by Raj Comics – like Super Commander, Doga, Hitchiker and others. These comics are available in Hindi and English.

Somil Gupta, co-founder of planet 41 Mobiventures said that they were hitting notes of new-age consumers who prefer digital content over print editions. The price difference too helps.

The print editions of these comics range from 50-100, whereas the digital versions
are sold at 10 per book.

In the animated version, it takes away the text bubble, and re-draw the vacuum that it creates. It also lip movements and hand movements to these comics, and use voice artists to spell the dialogue. The company also adds sound effects like lighting, explosion effects.

“This is done in the US by Marvel Comics, in India,” said Gupta. Currently, the books are available for Tata Docomo and Idea Cellular customers. The company is planning on expanding it across operators, soon.

The comic book will be delivered in the form of a URL via an SMS. The comic opens on a WAP browser, and works only on the mobile. Since the company has no means on charging the consumer online, the URL cannot be used on the computer.

“People would not want to use their credit cards for such small amounts. On the mobile, it will get deducted from the pre-paid balance or add to the bill,” said Gupta.

Gupta feels that URL is a better form of delivery than creating an application. He feels that charging and selling is tougher as many forms of the applications across platforms like Android, iOS have to be created, and also duly promoted. “Now we can go directly promote the content,” he said.

The comics sell quite well in the North like UP, Punjab, Delhi and Uttaranchal where Raj Comics are popular. Planet 41 wants to expand it to the South by translating them in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam. Also, these comics are directed towards children who are older than ten years.

The company want to gain consumers across age groups with more titles. It is in talks with amond Comics which has famous characters like Chacha Chaudhary, Pinki, Shaktimaan and Captain Vyom. They want to bring in Lotpot comics on mobile as well, and cater to children who are as young as six or seven.

The company has two versions of comics on mobile. The non-animated version is simpler where they expand the text bubble of the comic to make it easier to read.

FCC Seeks fine from Google in wireless data privacy case

2012-04-22T21:37:00.000-07:00

Image via CrunchBase

FCC Seeks $25,000 fine from Google in wireless data privacy case

The Us Federal Communications Commission is seeking a $25,000 fine from Google Inc for not cooperating with an investigation of the company’s collection of personal data from wireless networks.

For months, Google “impeded” and “delayed” the probe, which concerned e-mail, text messages and other private material gathered in connection with the company’s Street View location service, according to an FCC filing dated April 13.

“We find that Google apparently and willfully and repeatedly violated. Commission orders to produce certain information and documents,” the FCC said in the filing.

Google, owner of the world’s most popular search engine, has come under rising scrutiny from regulators over how it handles data. Last year, the company agreed to settle claims with the Federal Trade Commission that it used deceptive tactics and violated its own privacy policies with the Buzz social network introduced in 2010. The FTC settlement requires Google to undergo independent privacy audits for 20 years.

For three years starting in May 2007, Google collected content from wireless networks that wasn’t needed for its location-based services, the FCC said. Google gathered so-called “payload” data including e-mail and text messages, passwords, Internet-usage history, and “other highly sensitive personal information,” the FCC said.

In May 2010, Google, which had revenue of $37.9 billion last year, said it would stop using Wi-Fi information for Street View, which displays pictures of streets on Google Maps. At the time, the company acknowledged that it had collected the information by mistake.

Mistique Cano, a spokeswoman for Mountain View, California-based Google, didn’t immediately have a comment.

A security personnel answers a call at the reception counter of the Google office in Hyderabad.

BLOOMBERG

Where does Google see its future

2012-04-22T21:36:00.001-07:00

Google’s Page ‘quite focused’ on lower ends of tablet market

Where does Google see its future in the tablet market? Try the bargain bin.

Responding to a question about tablets during the company’s earnings call today, Google chief executive Larry Page said: “We definitely believe that there is going to be a lot of success with the lower ends of the market, as well with lower-price products; that will be very significant, and definitely an area we think is important, and we’re quite focused on.”

Tablets running on Google’s Android operating system have struggled to compete with the iPad, which dominates the market.

“There is a number of Android tablets out there, and obviously we have strong competition there,” Page said.

One of the most popular budget tablets is the Kindle Fire, as Page suggested on the call.

“There’s also obviously been a lot of success on some lower-price tablets that run Android, maybe not the full Google version of Android,” Page said, referring to Amazon’s tablet.

The Kindle Fire is based on Android, but Amazon has reconstructed the software so significantly that it doesn’t help the search giant much. Amazon doesn’t bundle Google’s services, like its search engine, e-mail and social network, with the tablet.

Google has been rumored to be working on a so-called Nexus tablet that will introduce a new version of the Android operating system and sell for a low price. The Verge reported last week, citing unnamed sources, that the tablet’s release date had been pushed back to July in order to reduce production costs.

As part of Google’s harder push into tablets, Page’s ambitions include making Android phones and tablets play better together, probably relying more heavily on cloud synchronization. Google Play, the media hub that the company released last month, will help with that unification, Page said.

“You won’t have to manage all these devices,” Page said. “You want to think about all these screens around you working seamlessly.”

That goal will be especially important when Google puts a screen directly in front of your eyeball.

MARK MILIAN

Internet giants scramble for social media pie

2012-04-22T21:36:00.000-07:00

Internet giants scramble for social media pie

In India, mobile advertising set to touch $144 crore by 2013. In March 2012, the market was pegged at $105 crore , according to the findings of the Internet and Mobile Association of India

Last week, when news about Facebook acquiring the startup photo-sharing app Instagram for a whopping $1 billion surfaced, the digital world was abuzz with frantic activity and comments. While the investors and market watchers got busy analysing the valuation of Instagram in the wake of the deal, others talked about how Facebook’s appetite to gobble up players had increased over the years.

Scratch the surface a little a bit and one can see that Facebook was not just trying to net the 30-million strong user base of Instagram, but was rather making a strategic move to keep competitors (read Google) at bay. As Gartner’s principal research analyst (India) Asheesh Raina puts it, “Facebook paid a premium, as it wanted to keep Instagram out of the hands of the competitors.”

Though an eye-popping $1 billion may sound too much a price for protecting its turf from a potential threat, it is nowhere close to what Google paid ($12 billion) last year to Motorola Mobility to protect its mobile franchise. Or, when Microsoft shelled out $8.5 billion to acquire Skype. Google acquired Motorola Mobility to protect its popular Android mobile operating system from Apple and Microsoft’s anti-competitive threats to its patent portfolio.

Analysts however believe there’s another compelling reason why Facebook spent big on the acquisition. As research firm Forrester’s CEO George Colony wrote, Facebook is too web-centric:” App internet poses mortal danger for any player that remains too web-centric. It will enable companies to directly link with their customers.”

The acquisition of Instagram puts Facebook in a better position in the app internet market and perhaps becomes a template for how Facebook will expand its model into the new high engagement architecture, Colony added. Without Facebook’s own app presence, “Apple, Google, Amazon, (and potentially Microsoft) ecosystems can become too powerful, blocking the Facebook’s growth and presence,” he wrote.

Instagram, a free photo sharing programme, was launched in October 2010 by Kevin Systrom. It allows users to take photos and apply digital filters and effects, before sharing them on social networking sites.

An article in Fortune magazine in November suggested how the mobile is going to be the next battlefront for Silicon Valley’s web giants. Facebook, Google, and Apple are all competing to attract mobile users and make money off their actions. “Google may also find ways to build many Google+ features right into Android phones and tablets, making it harder for rivals to compete. That last point is not lost on (Mark) Zuckerberg. It prompted him to seek closer ties with Google’s biggest rival in mobile ¬¬¬¬¬--- Apple,” the Fortune article said.

In India, mobile advertising is all set to touch $144 crore by 2013. In March, the market was pegged at $105 crore, according to the findings of Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI). Raina feels Facebook is aware that its strength lies in easy interface, photo-tagging and sharing capabilities. Instagram strengthens its presence in the space. “More, it gives them access to mobile devices and helps users instantly edit, upload and share photos through their devices,” he says.

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