Future Image and I3A Announce Date, Venue, Agenda and New Format for “Mobile Imaging Summit^TM North America 2005,” Call for Speakers

Conference to Examine Opportunities “Inside the Camera-phone Ecosystem”

SAN MATEO, Calif. – July 13, 2005 -- Future Image Inc, the leading independent center of expertise on the convergence of imaging, information technology, and telecommunications, and I3A (International Imaging Industry Association), the leading global association for the imaging industry, announced today the fifth Mobile Imaging Summit to be held in Monterey, California, on October 11-12, 2005. The theme of the event is Opportunities Inside the Camera-Phone Ecosystem – The Americas. Sponsors to date include Nokia, Cognima, Digimarc, dotPhoto, DxO Labs, Eastman Kodak, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, Nethra Imaging, Neven Vision, Silverwire, and Sprint. Association sponsors are Photokina, Photo Marketing Association (PMA) and CTIA – The Wireless Association^TM.

The Mobile Imaging Summit conferences are limited attendance events for senior executives that bring together leaders of the imaging, information processing and telecommunications industries to foster revenue growth in the camera-phone ecosystem. The content, venue and amenities are carefully designed to maximize opportunities for participants to identify areas of mutual business advantage, and to make the high-level connections that enable market leadership and drive competitive advantage. Sessions are conducted in a highly interactive format, drawing on Future Image’s extensive research and a stellar lineup of industry speakers to highlight key issues and promote discussion onstage and off.

The Monterey Summit will be the first to feature a new session format that more prominently features Future Image research. “Our attendees have consistently given rave reviews to our unique format that bans canned company pitches in favor of moderated discussion and broad interactive audience participation,” said Joe Byrd, VP, Conferences and Alliances. “However as the market matures, attendees are telling us they would like to hear more from our analysts, who have the justified reputation of being the most astute in the business. We’re therefore revising our format to allow our analysts to make a brief presentation of their relevant research at the beginning of each session, before moderating the discussion.”

The summary agenda is as follows (for a full description of sessions, please see www.gmedication.com):

Ø       State of the Industry. Presented by Tony Henning, Managing Editor of the Future Image Mobile Imaging Report

Ø       Visionary Roundtable, Moderated by Alexis Gerard, President, Future Image: What’s the “killer app” for mobile imaging?

Ø       Print: Beyond the 4x6. While printing of digital images is on the rise, there are reasons to expect customer behavior will gradually shift away from products whose value proposition is rooted in conventional photography. What forms of photo display will offer compelling value to the new breed of purely digital snapshooters and photographers?

Ø       The Future of Bandwidth: 3G networks are going live all across the globe. Meanwhile vendors of WiMAX, UMTS TDD, Flash-OFDM, and various flavors of Wi-Fi are gearing up to offer fatter pipes for transferring images, video, music and games. Which is the future of Mobile Imaging? And how will customers pay for it?

Ø       Goodbye Camera? Will camera phones become the primary picture taking device? We’ll look at the considerable advances in camera-phone usability and image quality and discuss whether they can achieve mainstream acceptance as our primary picture-taking devices, all but displacing “traditional” cameras.

Ø       Video - Mainstream At Last, or Still a Niche? With full-screen/full-motion video capture capabilities coming to low-cost digital cameras and camera-phones, it will be widely available, but will it take off in any significant way? This panel will examine what obstacles have held video back for so long; what new products and technologies overcome these issues; what monetization strategies are coming into place; and the new ways in which consumers will begin to use video capture, playback, and even real-time transmission.

Ø       Storage and Management: Gold Mine or Loss Leader? There are opportunities to monetize mobile images beyond printing them. In this session we’ll discuss whether offering storage, archiving, and management services to mobile photographers can become a profitable business or will always be a loss leader or enabler for other downstream uses.

Ø       The Imaging Living Room. As home entertainment systems become digital, networked, and more complex, how will they work with the portable capture and playback devices everyone has now — and the ones they will be buying in the near future? Who will drive this combination — or are there in fact already too many would-be drivers on a collision course?

Ø       New Technology Showcase: Be among the first to preview new camera-phone based technologies that will reshape the Mobile Imaging industry.

Ø       Opportunities in Business Imaging – Grassroots or IT? In the business world new technology must clear the hurdle of corporate IT departments who most often frown on anything new and unproven — or not easily integrated into their existing systems. Should mobile imaging vendors follow the path of the first personal computers that snuck in through the “back door”? Or can the imaging and information technology industries work together quickly — and smoothly?

Ø       Social Imaging: Where’s the Beef? As demonstrated vividly during the London bombings, camera-phones are becoming a social force. In addition to simple photo diaries and sharing sites, moblogs are now being used as citizen watchdog and crime prevention tools, as travel guides to “annotate” the physical world, and more. Mobile dating applications that combine imaging, presence, and opt-in are reshaping courtship and family values. Is there money to be made in these applications?

Ø       Financial Roundtable: Show me the Money! How will the various players in the Mobile Imaging ecosystem make money? Will it be minutes or services that drive innovation? How will the traffic be monetized? How have the M&A targets been monetized? Where and when will Venture Capitalists place their bets?

Ø       Industry Forum: ­ Moderated by Lisa Walker, president, International Imaging Industry Association (I3A) The pictures taken by many newer camera-phones are no longer just for soft viewing; ­ they can be printed with very satisfactory results. In this Forum we’ll address ways to educate the general public to this new reality, so their valuable memories can be fully enjoyed, shared and preserved.

Speaking opportunities are still available for some of the panel discussions as outlined above. Companies wishing to submit speaker profiles for consideration should send them to Joe Byrd, Future Image’s VP of Conferences at [email protected] along with a selection of sessions that are appropriate for the nominee.

About Future Image
Future Image Inc. is the leading independent center of expertise on the convergence of imaging, technology, and business, with primary emphasis on Mobile Imaging. It publishes research studies on the impact of emerging imaging-focused technologies or business trends in three categories: Infrastructure, Appliances, and Services. Recent topics include: Phone-to-phone Picture Mail interoperability, Print capabilities of Camera-Phones, and the Convergence of Still and Video Capture Devices.

Mobile Imaging Summit attendees receive free subscriptions to Future Image’s two continuous information services – the Executive Information Service (EIS) and the Mobile Imaging Report (MIR) – Executive Edition. The EIS covers the imaging industry as a whole through the weekly Future Image Weekly Briefing — a news-oriented summary delivered by e-mail — and a hard-copy monthly (The Future Image Report) that focuses on features – research, commentary, and analysis. The MIR is offered in two versions: Enterprise and Executive Edition. The MIR Executive Edition is a weekly email briefing summarizing and commenting on the week’s key developments, plus the headline and lead sentence from all the week’s stories impacting the Mobile Imaging space — devices, components, services, content, infrastructure, deals, and executive moves. For more information please visit www.FutureImage.com and www.mobileimagingreport.com or email [email protected]. Founded in 1991, the company is headquartered in San Mateo (CA).

The International Imaging Industry Association (I3A) is the leading global imaging industry association, driving growth of and setting standards for the photographic and information imaging markets. As the industry focal point, I3A offers a framework and environment where members can quickly find resources to solve critical issues and develop market solutions. Members of I3A work together to find common ground for advancing the industry and to enable better products and services for their customers. I3A has focused on promoting industry collaboration on mobile imaging since early 2001. Information about I3A can be found on the World Wide Web at www.i3a.org or by phone at 914-698-7603.

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