Say Cheese!  The market's hottest commodity is no longer the lowly cellular phone.  Today's generation is equipped with a camera phone that allows them to answer life's calls, and take the pictures to prove it!

It seems that most people have cell phones these days.  There are WAP-enabled, Bluetooth and infrared-based models, but regardless of the style, we've all got 'em.  Not convinced?  Try a little experiment and see for yourself:

Stand in crowded public place, like at the mall or on a busy street corner.  Have a nearby buddy call you on your cell phone and as it rings, look to see how many people are reaching in their pockets or purses to check their own phones. 

The very fact that cell phones have caught on like wildfire in the bushes is hardly surprising.  After all, these mobile wonders offer constant communications from just about anywhere, to virtually anywhere.  What amazes some people, however, is the rampant popularity of the camera phone.

Today's cell phones are like the Swiss army knives of the communication world.  With just a touch of a button they can be used to instantly send and receive e-mail and text messages, play games, surf the Internet and keep track of appointments. Best of all, each of these tasks can be accomplished while the user is out and about: at work, on the bus, in a restaurant or at a club.  Now, the most exciting advancement in the average cell phone is the addition of photographing capabilities.  The ability to take digital photographs from their handset is enough to send users out to the stores to replace their perfect good handsets with new camera phones.

Camera phones were first introduced to the Japanese market several years ago.  These new cell phones immediately caught on with Asian cell phone users.  It wasn't until a few years later, however, that camera phones were widely marketed in the US and became available to the masses. At first, they weren't overly popular. As soon as people began to see the extreme convenience afforded by a camera morphed with a cell phone, the devices became so well liked that some have predicted that they may become the most popular consumer device in history.

According to industry analysts, camera phones comprised 12% of the total cell phones sold in 2003, and predicted those numbers to rapidly climb.  A research firm called IDC suggested that more than 80 million camera cell phones have been sold worldwide.

You may ask yourself, why not just carry a phone and a camera?  You'll know the difference when you spot the perfect sunset at the beach, with your camera locked in the trunk of your car three miles up the shore.  Or you'll notice the difference when you bump into your favorite movie star at a busy restaurant, whip out your camera phone for an impromptu photo shoot, and email the photo proof to your buddies just seconds later. 

The convenience of having a camera incorporated into a cell phone may seem excessive, but you never know when life will hand you a perfect moment.  And when it happens, that's one call you don't want to miss.