iPhone Most Used on Flickr

The iPhone has become the most frequently used camera for Flickr photos, according to the photo site's Camera Finder. While not providing a timeline for when this happened or its percentage of the market, the Yahoo-owned site shows that Apple's smartphone has just recently overtaken the Canon Digital Rebel XTi in overall popularity for submissions. About 12.4 million photos have been identified as coming from some form of iPhone, with an average of 5,017 users uploading photos every day.

Other contenders in the category are DSLRs and include the next-best Rebel XSi, the Nikon D80 and a third Canon, the EOS-40D. In cameraphones, Apple has long maintained and now extended its lead over the Nokia N95.

As always, Flickr hasn't attempted to explain the gain, though the launch of the iPhone 3GS in June is the most obvious candidate for the sudden upswing. Besides spurring a sudden abundance of new iPhones in the market, the 3GS is specifically touted for better still shot abilities, such as better sensitivity in low light and touchscreen autofocusing. It can also produce videos usable by Flickr, although utilities are still rare to upload those videos to sites other than MobileMe and YouTube.

Apple's advantage also stems partly from a lack of adequate metadata from many cameraphones, which often don't generate IPTC data about which phone took a given shot and with which settings. The absence partially overrepresents the iPhone and similar hardware that properly tags each image.

By Electronista Staff