Photobucket stats show compacts 'still have a role'

Nikon 1200pj
New stats from Photobucket show camera use is on the decline

A survey by the photography sharing website PhotoBucket has revealed some interesting trends about where its images are coming from.

The company, which currently has around 100 million users with 9.5 billion photos and videos, conducts a survey every year to take a closer look at photographic trends. It also uses technical and EXIF data to compile the stats.

Unsurprisingly, the trends show that mobile phones are being increasingly used to take, edit and share photos, with mobile app usage shown to have increased by 64%, more than doubling since Summer 2011.

Switch

Digital camera use has apparently shrunk from 82% down to 64% in the space of a year, but interestingly, the survey found that 38% of respondents switched between digital cameras and mobile devices during the 2011 holiday period, perhaps suggesting that cameras are still favoured over mobiles for more "important" images.

Other survey results showed that while there has been a growth in the photo-sharing market, fewer people are sharing across multiple sites, instead preferring to consolidate images on one service.

This year, 80% of the poll respondents shared photos online via social media sites, up from 57% at the same time last year.

Photobucket internal data revealed that, somewhat unusually, 75% of the photos taken on mobile devices were from Android OS smartphones, while just 25% came from an Apple device. It is especially odd when considering that Flickr data shows that the iPhone 4 is its most popular image capture device, beating all cameras, let alone other mobile phones.

Amy Davies

Amy has been writing about cameras, photography and associated tech since 2009. Amy was once part of the photography testing team for Future Publishing working across TechRadar, Digital Camera, PhotoPlus, N Photo and Photography Week. For her photography, she has won awards and has been exhibited. She often partakes in unusual projects - including one intense year where she used a different camera every single day. Amy is currently the Features Editor at Amateur Photographer magazine, and in her increasingly little spare time works across a number of high-profile publications including Wired, Stuff, Digital Camera World, Expert Reviews, and just a little off-tangent, PetsRadar.