by Jason Snell
To beat the iPhone, beat the iPhone’s camera
The most critical component to Apple’s current mobile dominance lies behind that sapphire crystal lens. In today’s commoditized smartphone market, even great design and spectacular thinness are becoming commonplace. Powerful processors and large batteries are expected rather than exceptional. To win over new customers (and to keep existing ones), smartphone makers will have to act like what they are selling is actually a smart camera first and everything else second.
I am constantly amazed at the quality of the iPhone 6 camera. But more than that, I see it with my teenaged daughter and her friends—their primary social-media platform is Instagram, and getting those photos is the single most important thing they do on their phones. We can joke about selfies all we want, but this is a generation that is using photography as a primary medium of communication. That’s huge.
[via Stephen Hackett]