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According to a recent multi-client study by IDC, a large number of vendors is attempting to capitalize on the growing worldwide personal storage market, which is being driven by the data protection and backup needs of small businesses and consumers. Following two years of remarkable growth, almost 70% in 2006 and over 30% in 2007, the market is forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 20% from 2006 to 2011.

A survey of more than 9,000 professional photographers in the U.S. shows that film continues to have an avid following, with 75 percent of photographers saying they will continue to use film, even as some embrace digital imaging technology. The results of the U.S. survey, conducted by the Eastman Kodak Company (NYSE: EK), mirror the results of a similar survey the company recently conducted in Europe, where more than two-thirds of professional photographers surveyed plan to continue using film.

According to a new forecast from InfoTrends, online photo service membership continues to experience steady growth, resulting in increased revenue for Web-based print providers. InfoTrends reports that online photo service providers generated just under $450 million in revenues from prints and photo merchandise in 2006, and that figure is expected to grow to more than $1 billion by 2011.

Since the early 90s, large-format digital printers, began showing up at the annual Graph Expo and larger Print exhibitions at Chicago's McCormick Place. In those days, the digital inkjet printers were of the Encad brand, now a Kodak company, and absent from the September show. As those of you who've followed the growth of the industry are probably aware, Hewlett-Packard is number one today, followed by Epson, and in third place is Canon.

AMD has released its Global Climate Protection Plan, highlighting the company's environmental strategy and goals. Since publishing its first annual Global Climate Protection Plan in 2001, AMD says it has exceeded its EPA Climate Leaders goal to reduce by 2007 greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent through decreasing the company's normalized greenhouse gas emissions by more than 50 percent since 2002.

HP has agreed to acquire thin client specialist Neoware, in a deal worth $214m. The deal is designed to boost HP's leadership in the personal computing market, and expand its footing in the emerging desktop virtualisation market. HP is also playing the green IT card, announcing that the deal will reduce the firm's environmental footprint “through reduced noise, power and packaging versus desktop PCs”.

Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola Co. and Hewlett-Packard made the most progress improving their reputations in the second quarter of 2007, a Swiss research company recently announced. Covalence studies the ethical reputations of multinational companies. It compiles a score in three categories: best “EthicalQuote” score, best ethical progress and best reported performance. The index quantifies qualitative data using 45 criteria. The criteria includes business contribution to human development, such as its human rights policy, labor standards and waste management, among others.

Eastman Kodak Company Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Antonio M. Perez announced that the board of directors has promoted Philip J. Faraci to the position of President and Chief Operating Officer. As President and COO, Faraci will be responsible for the day-to-day management of Kodak's two major digital businesses: the Consumer Digital Imaging Group (CDG) and the Graphic Communications Group (GCG). Faraci, 52, had been President of CDG and a Senior Vice President of the company.

Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) said an international standards body has agreed to vote on whether to accept the company's new digital-photo file format as a standard, which Microsoft hopes will one day replace the widely used JPEG format as the industry standard for electronic photography and digital imaging. The Joint Photographic Expert Group has agreed to submit formal balloting of HD Photo to JPEG's national delegations for approval by the fall. The tentative name for the spec is JPEG XR.

Microsoft has failed in its attempt to have its Office Open XML document format fast-tracked straight to the status of an international standard by the International Organization for Standardization. The proposal must now be revised to take into account the negative comments made during the voting process. Microsoft expects that a second vote early next year will result in approval. That is by no means certain, however, given the objections raised by some national standards bodies.

At the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Annual Meeting, Pure Digital Technologies announced a donor-matching program designed to put the power of video to work for nonprofit organizations worldwide. The company's commitment is to distribute up to one million Flip Video Camcorders to these organizations over the next five years. Announced as the Flip Video Spotlight program, non-profit organizations and other qualified non-governmental organizations (NGOs) can now affordably use video as a tool to highlight the need for their services, better communicate with their donors, and broadcast their accomplishments to the world.

This new report from Lyra profiles the urban Chinese digital camera consumer. With camera technology advancements in recent years, Lyra predicts that adoption of digital cameras in China will progress from the early-adopter stage to the mass market stage much more quickly than it did in other nations.

The majority of digital SLR users are women, according to the 2007 PMA U.S. Digital Imaging Survey. PMA reports that 51 percent of primary DSLR users are female, while 49 percent are male. The survey also found that more than half of the households where the camera owner is female have an annual income of more than $75,000 and a child under six years old. Since male DSLR users are more diverse, the survey suggests women are more apt to use their cameras for family photography. In the digital camera market as a whole, 62 percent of owners are female while just 38 percent are male.

According to the 2007 PMA U.S. Digital Imaging Survey, 98 percent of digital camera households stored their digital images using various storage methods in 2006. More than two-thirds of households store their digital images by transferring them to the hard drive, but not all households are backing them up. Thirty-nine percent of households that use a hard drive for storage back up all of the digital images beyond storing them on the hard drive. Twenty-five percent back up only some of the images first stored on a hard drive, while 36 percent of households do not back up their images at all once they are transferred to the hard drive. People between the ages of 25 and 54 are by far the most likely to back up all of their images. Forty-three percent of those between 35 and 44 years old back up all of their images, compared to only 21 percent and 28 percent of those under 25 and over 65 years old, respectively.

Digital photographers and scrapbookers now have even more creative options for printing their photographs – Canon U.S.A., Inc., has just announced the SELPHY ES2 Compact Photo Printer, the latest addition to the popular SELPHY line of Canon compact photo printers. Combining new creative functions with advanced usability, the SELPHY ES2 Compact Photo Printer features an easy-to-use operation panel, a three-inch LCD monitor and multiple creative options for photos, including frames, clip art and image effects. With the Easy-Photo Pack cartridge, ink and paper come together in one integrated system, making the SELPHY ES2 Compact Photo Printer easy to operate and convenient.

DxO Labs has announced a new version of its RAW processing and image correction software. Optics Pro 5 features a new RAW conversion engine with a demosaicing algorithm that DxO says produces images with much more detail and fewer artifacts. The new engine also applies noise reduction before converting and demosaicing images, with the goal of retaining details that would be lost when noise is amplified by the RAW conversion process.

According to PEN News, Kodak Japan is preparing a launch of its photo book service, assisted by Kaga High Tech. The Photo Book market is one of the fastest growing segments in the digital photography sector. Output will be done through Kodak’s NexPress 2500 press. The launch is expected in the first quarter of 2008 via the Kodak network of dealers.

Kopin Corporation (NASDAQ: KOPN), the leading provider of microdisplays for mobile consumer electronics, announced that Eastman Kodak Company, one of the world's leading camera makers, has expanded its use of Kopin electronic viewfinders (EVF) by selecting Kopin's CyberEVF 230K-NF module for its new EASYSHARE Z812 IS digital camera. It is the fourth EASYSHARE model unveiled using Kopin's ultra-compact EVF.

Fiercewireless.com has put together three charts detailing some key metrics from the top five carriers in the U.S.: Alltel, AT&T, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless. (That was alphabetical order.) Check out the tables to see how these carriers stack up from Q2 2006 – Q2 2007 when it comes to churn, ARPU (Sprint's is postpaid only) and net subscriber
additions.

With more than 400 million subscribers in 2006, the mainland is the world’s No. 1 cell-phone market by size. China's mobile subscriber base exceeded 400 million in 2006, and mobile penetration is estimated to be slightly more than 30 percent, analysts say. These numbers continue to climb, although exact figures differ from one research house to another. Informa Telecoms & Media is forecasting China's mobile subscribers to top 600 million by the end of 2007. Other research houses have figures around the 500-million mark: Wireless Intelligence forecasts total mobile connections to be around 509 million, while Gartner and Portio Research's estimates are 511 million and 519 million subscribers, respectively.

Waiting for a friend in Shenzhen’s plush Kingglory Plaza, Chen Jing, 25, admired her new Nokia mobile phone. Complete with MP3 and third-generation network capability, the red phone cost just over 3,000 yuan – Chen's entire monthly wage. But she was more than pleased with her purchase, the equivalent of $400. “It looks really good,” she said. Extravagant spending perhaps, but women consumers like Chen are fueling the growth in Chinese consumer spending and helping to reduce the country's high rate of personal savings, a source of tension with its trading partners.

Developing countries now account for more than half of mobile subscriber growth worldwide, with the top 10 adding around 285 million new subscribers in 2006 alone. With the exception of the U.S., the world's top 10 mobile growth markets are all in countries considered to be “emerging” in Asia/Pacific, Africa, and Latin America.

The European Commission will propose abolishing a 1987 rule that limits the use of low frequency – and low cost – radio spectrum to GSM services, a source close to the dossier told Dow Jones Newswires. If the commission's proposal passes into law, telecommunication operators will be able to use the cheap radio spectrum for services as such as voice, video and data streaming and broadband Internet access on any wireless, mobile devices. The commission estimates the move would cut the costs of maintaining wireless mobile networks by 40% for the industry, according to the person.

A year after shuttering its ESPN cellphone company, Walt Disney Co. said it is closing its Disney cellphone service. Walt Disney launched Mobile ESPN and Disney Mobile last year as mobile virtual network operators, or MVNOs. Under that business model, the Burbank, Calif., company leased wireless spectrum from Sprint Nextel Corp. and sold its cellphone service directly to customers.

Mio Technology, a leading maker of mobile GPS devices based in Taiwan, has selected Nethra Imaging's smart camera chip for its Mio DigiWalker A702 GPS PDA phone. This is the first handset on the market to integrate Nethra's first-generation image processor which enables print quality images and digital still camera-like functionality from mobile devices.

Nethra Imaging has announced its second generation smart camera chips, now available in the industry's smallest package for low power, handheld consumer devices. The NI-2065/66 programmable image processor family can be integrated into camera module designs and handsets, providing consumers with “print quality” images from less expensive optics and digital still camera-like functionality from their mobile devices.

Philips Lumileds announced today that it has delivered more than 100 million units of the industry leading Luxeon Flash power LEDs to camera phone manufacturers worldwide and enabled an entirely new segment. The functional flash market for camera phones was established less than three years ago when the company released its first generation Luxeon Flash making this product one of the most quickly adopted and dominant products in company history. Luxeon Flash LEDs are uniquely capable of providing the quality illumination for camera flash applications in 2 megapixel and higher camera phones as well as for video and flashlight applications that are being built into mobile handsets today.

Verizon Wireless announced that Gartner, Inc. positioned the company in the Leaders Quadrant in the analyst firm's, “Magic Quadrant for U.S. Wireless Service Providers,” report. According to Gartner, to be placed in the Leaders Quadrant, a company must “impact competitors by the choices they make in technology and handset offerings, their focus on the enterprise segment, and their capability to differentiate and be first to market with unique products. The launch of a new handset or technology, recognizing the need for coverage in a specific area or partnering with new application providers must all be done with an enterprise focus.”

CeBIT Asia 2007

Shanghai, China

Symbian Smart Phoneshow

London, United Kingdom

Texas Wireless Summit

Austin, Texas

6th Annual Printable Electronics and Displays Conference & Suppliers' Fair

Foster City, CA

PDN PhotoPlus International Conference & Expo

New York, New York

CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment

San Francisco, California

SGIA

Orlando, Florida

SMPTE Technical Committee & Exhibition

Brooklyn, New York

Imaging Expo Singapore 2007

Singapore

Wireless World Research Forum

Chennai (Madras) India

Wireless Congress 2007: Systems & Applications

Munich, Germany

2007 6Sight Conference

Monterey, California

Mobile Asia Congress

Macau, Asia

Mobile Internet World

Boston, Massachusetts

WiMAX 2007

Munich, Germany

Nokia World 2007

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Mobility World Congress & Exhibition

Hong Kong

2008 International CES

Las Vegas, NV

6th International Conference on Image Science and Hardcopy

Zhanjiang City, China

Electronic Imaging

San Jose, California

DIMA

Las Vegas, Nevada

 PMA 2008

Las Vegas, Nevada

SMPTE/VSF Joint Conference

Houston, Texas

Mobile World Congress

Barcelona, Spain

AIIM Expo

Boston, Massachusetts

CTIA Wireless 2008

Las Vegas, Nevada

Vancouver, Canada

Computerworld Mobile and Wireless World

Miami, FL

IS & T Archiving Conference

Bern, Switzerland

Photokina

Cologne, Germany