Eero Salmelin's vision and leadership during the past decade have made a significant impact on the mobile imaging industry. During this time, the industry has grown from insignificance to one that touches the lives of billions of people around the planet daily. It's no exaggeration to say that Nokia and Eero's work there pushed the capabilities of mobile imaging and helped bring a camera into almost every pocket. I3A has been fortunate to have his contributions to our Camera Phone Image Quality Initiative.

Eero got his first camera at the age of four. When he joined Nokia as a camera design engineer in 1999, he was soon offered the possibility of doing a Master's thesis on the then-crazy idea of putting a camera into a mobile phone. His tenure at Nokia began with developing the first camera modules for mobile phones, and eventually included responsibility for all the company's camera solutions. During this time, Nokia became the largest camera manufacturer (in volume) in the world, shipping more than two billion camera components to consumers inside Nokia products.

In addition to the huge volume, Nokia has brought a continuous stream of products to the market, extending the reach of mobile imaging. The company's high-end devices, developed under Eero's leadership, have pushed the boundaries of image quality (more than merely increasing megapixels), making his early dream of capturing great images and video with a device that is always with you a reality.

After holding several positions of increasing scope within Nokia's camera-related business units, including serving as project manager for the first megapixel camera and as Director of Symbian camera solutions, in 2011 Eero was appointed Director, Head of Imaging. In this role he is responsible for leading the development of camera hardware and imaging software for the company, in its Windows Phone organization.

Intel Corporation joined I3A as a Strategic member in October and is now actively involved in I3A's Camera Phone Image Quality (CPIQ) Initiative.

Intel, a leading producer of visual computing innovations, develops technologies, products, and initiatives that continually advance how people work and live.  They design and build the essential technologies that serve as the foundation for the world's computing devices.   

From the groundbreaking 2nd generation Intel® Core™ processor family to technology innovation in unexpected places, Intel constantly looks ahead to create a roadmap for the future.  Founded in 1968 to build semiconductor memory products, Intel introduced the world's first microprocessor in 1971. In 2003, Intel celebrated 35 years and shipped their one-billionth processor and in 2009, they were featured in Fortune's "World's Most Admired Companies" and its "25 Top Companies for Leaders" lists.

The Future of Technology is Experience:    Intel brings cutting-edge consumer products to life.

iCRco, based in Torrance, CA, is an established, privately-held, global provider of complete digital imaging software and hardware solutions for the medical, chiropractic, dental, veterinary and non-destructive testing markets. For the past 20 years, iCRco's offerings have included a complete suite of x-ray imaging hardware, PACS, imaging software and integrated solutions. iCRco houses the entire R&D, software engineering, technical support as well as sales and marketing teams under one roof at their Torrance, CA headquarters, allowing them to provide superior customer service and support while answering to their customer's needs immediately and efficiently.

We are pleased to announce that Broadcom Corporation, an innovator in semiconductor solutions for wired and wireless communications, has joined I3A as a Regular member.  Broadcom will be an active member of I3A's Mobile Imaging Interest Group and our Camera Phone Image Quality (CPIQ) Initiative.

"The company's expertise in mobile multimedia image processing will be a welcome addition to our CPIQ team, especially as we move into the next phase of development to address HD video image quality.  The timing is perfect for our roadmap and is a welcome boost to our efforts," said I3A President Lisa Walker.

I3A’s "Best in Class" Safety awards recognize those companies with the safest workplaces, as determined by injury and illness case rates for the year, in different categories. The company in each category that meets all the I3A Safety Excellence Awards Program criteria and has the lowest OSHA Recordable Incidence (ORI) with the most hours worked during the calendar year is recognized as being best in its class among I3A member companies.

Congratulations to our Best-in-Class recipients for their truly remarkable safety records!

Eastman Kodak Company

Kodak de Mexico

Best in Class: Manufacturing

FUJIFILM Canada Inc.

Mississauga, Ontario, Canada

Best in Class: Warehousing

FUJIFILM Holdings of America Corporation

Valhalla, NY

Best in Class: R&D Administrative

Fujifilm North America Corporation

Printing Services Group – Portland, OR

Best in class: Photo Services

Meet I3A's European Coordinator

I3A recently appointed Andrea de Polo (Head of the Digital Imaging Department at Alinari) I3A European Coordinator. In this role, he will:

1. Represent I3A at various industry events, both in Europe and the U.S.;
2. Act as a point of contact for European imaging companies who may have questions or interest in I3A or our programs;
3. Provide ideas for potential new programs of interest to worldwide and European companies involved in the imaging ecosystem;
4. Keep I3A (and its members) abreast of speaking opportunities in Europe and other countries.

In addition to his responsibilities at Alinari and his new role within I3A, Andrea is also currently involved in several standards-related projects such as: IPTC Photo Metadata group, Adobe Photoshop beta tester (mainly for metadata matters), Cepic Picture Agency association, TauVisuall Italian Photo Association, PMA Photo Marketing Association and the Jpeg Italian working group.

The history of Agfa goes back to the nineteenth century and is a long and illustrious record of innovation and technological leadership. A Belgian "photo products" business and a German color dye manufacturer joined forces and grew into an internationally renowned company in the graphic and healthcare industries.

The Agfa-Gevaert Group develops, produces and distributes an extensive range of analog and digital imaging systems, their consumables and IT solutions, mainly for the printing industry and the healthcare sector, as well as for specific industrial applications.

Agfa plays a leading role in protecting the health and safety of its employees and preserving the environment. Agfa is committed to systematically developing environmentally acceptable products and production processes, to conserve natural resources, operate its facilities safely and minimize the impact of its activities and products on the environment.

As evidence of their dedication, Agfa is an active participant of I3A's Safety Committee, I3A's Environment & Health Committee and the I3A X-Ray Market Share Research Program.

This year's 6Sight Conference promises an exceptional line-up of industry pros

Data and expert advice from top imaging analysts such as Marion Knocke of Gfk, Ron Glaz of IDC, Ed Lee of InfoTrends, Liz Cutting of NPD, Steve Hoffenberg of Lyra, and PMA publisher Gary Pageau An analyst roundtable moderated by noted independent journalist/researcher, Kristy Holch, the founder of InfoTrends Unique perspectives on the Future of Imaging from social media pioneer, author and investor Guy Kawasaki; digital printing and publishing pioneer and marketing expert Barb Pellow; digital photography editor and analyst Paul Worthington; mobile imaging pioneer and analyst Tony Henning; and nationally recognized mobile industry authority and Principal Analyst of MobileTrax, J. Gerry Purdy, Ph.D.

As an added highlight, this year's Conference will also feature I3A's Live Consumer panel (moderated by I3A President, Lisa Walker) on Mobile & Social Imaging. I3A's uniquely informative consumer panels provide executives with a unique opportunity to hear from the "horse's mouth" what consumers really think about their products and how they use them. This year's panel is a must-see, promising to provide valuable insight and fresh perspectives you won't hear anywhere else on how today's "socially connected" consumers use images as part of their daily lives and, more importantly, how they expect to use their images in the future.

"For several years the I3A live consumer panels have provided a uniquely valuable opportunity to find out directly what real people are doing with their images, what is important to them now, and what their expectations are for the future," said Walker. "This year, 6sight provides an excellent context for seeking new insights into the explosion of social imaging, and exploring new ways for our industry to deliver what consumers want."

I3A will also present their annual Achievement Award and reveal the winners of the 2nd Annual Vision 2020 Imaging Innovation Awards.

Don't miss this opportunity to connect with I3A, industry experts, and other professionals from the imaging community… Register today! (I3A Members receive a special discounted rate – visit the I3A Member Exclusives page for complete details).

We look forward to seeing you at 6Sight 2011 on June 20-22 at the Sainte Claire Hotel in San Jose, CA!

Welcome to our newest members:

Exclaim Mobility, Inc.
Exclaim Mobility was formed to create user-generated-content (UGC) socialization applications to help consumers easily interact and do more with UGC on mobile phones, and other consumer electronics. Exclaim delivers applications that empower consumers to easily create, access, share, message, track and securely archive photos, videos and music from virtually any consumer electronic device.

In addition to being popular with consumers, Exclaim Mobility has been able to create a financially scalable business model that can be deployed globally on any service-provider network with a minimum of pain and expense.

The company's underlying platform is an infinitely scalable, cloud-based architecture that connects virtually any type of consumer electronic device to other devices, social media services, content sharing and storage portals, home electronics and retailers.

NVIDIA
NVIDIA awakened the world to the power of computer graphics when it invented the GPU in 1999. Since then, it has consistently set new standards in visual computing with breathtaking, interactive graphics available on devices ranging from tablets and portable media players to notebooks and workstations. NVIDIA's expertise in programmable GPUs has led to breakthroughs in parallel processing that make supercomputing inexpensive and widely accessible. The company holds more than 1,800 patents worldwide, including ones covering designs and insights that are essential to modern computing.

NVIDIA has developed product brands to meet the needs of market segments such as mobile computing, PC's and notebooks, workstations and supercomputing. In addition, the company has introduced a number of important technologies such as 3D Vision, SLI, Optimus and PhysX.

A Passion for Camera Phone Image Quality

A significant milestone was recently reached in the Camera Phone Image Quality (CPIQ) initiative thanks to the efforts of Jonathan Phillips of Kodak.  During the group's face-to-face meeting, held at the offices of Flextronics in January, Jonathan presented results from his experiment to determine the validity of CPIQ's proposed methods for extrapolating the perceived image quality of a mobile phone camera based on objective results from a series of lab tests.

Ten camera phones ranging from 3.2 to 12MP were generously provided by CPIQ member companies.  Kodak tested the 10 phones using the published Phase 2 specifications for several metrics.  This study did not include metrics that are still under development and only covered outdoor shooting conditions.  However, even with the limited scope of the study, Kodak found that the perceived CPIQ quality-score for each camera correlated well with the actual image quality obtained in real-life shooting scenarios.