Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations

  

This week in my Media Law and Literacy class we learned about Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations (or Ideas) shown in the picture above. For any innovation or idea you think of, you can view it through the lens of this theory. However, some ideas never make it out of the Exploratory Era which is under the 'innovators' section of the bell curve. In this blog post, I am going to explore the innovation of the camera phone through this theory. 

The Exploratory Era for the camera phone was in 1997 when the first noted pioneer or innovator, Philippe Kahn, created the idea of the camera phone. He did this by connecting his camera to his flip phone through a computer. He was then able to take a picture of his newborn daughter and send it to 2,000 people in real-time which before this was unheard of.

It was not until two years later that the first commercial camera phone, the Kyocera Visual Phone VP-210, was created. It was released in Japan in May of 1999. This phone could transmit and receive messages in real-time and store up to 20 JPEG images. The early adopters of the camera phone used it because it was a new technology that provided an easy way to take pictures and share those images with others. It allowed for a whole new form of communication to take place.

It took awhile for the camera phone trend to hit the U.S. In November 2002, over two years since the Samsung SCH-V200 launched in South Korea, the Sanyo SCP-5300 (also known as the Sanyo Katana) went on sale in America. This idea was able to catch on and spread when it became more accessible. Not only were more people owning cellphones, but they were also owning cellphones with a camera built into them. Once someone saw others using one, they wanted to join in on the convenience.

I believe the tipping point is when phones without cameras became less accessible. Today most people who have cellphones have one with a camera and it is typically a smartphone. It is hard to find a cellphone that does not have a camera.

Those who do not have a camera phone are to be put under the 'laggards' section of the bell curve. There could be a few reasons some people do not own a camera phone. One reason is that maybe they are old such as in their 80's and find no reason to have one. They did not grow up with cellphones or even ones with a camera, therefore, they find no reason to own one. Another reason could be that someone cannot afford the device. No matter what the innovation or idea is there will always be a small percent that never joins in on the use of it or only joins when they are forced to.

To learn more about camera phones and their negative and positive impacts check out my other blog post here.