Selfie indulgence

As the selfie (a term used for self-taken pictures via handset) continues to take over the world, more and more smartphone manufacturers are starting to beef up the front-facing cameras on their latest devices.

Japanese tech giant Sony Corp has already bumped its traditional low-resolution front snappers up to 5 megapixels on its recently released Xperia C3, which the company claimed to be "the world's best selfie smartphone." Taiwan-headquartered HTC has also put greater focus on forward-facing cameras and the landing of its selfie phone, called "HTC Eye," was reported to be set for the fourth quarter in the US.

Microsoft's selfie phone with a 5-megapixel forward-facing camera was shown off during an internal meeting, according to Reuters on July 29. While the report said the phone would come online soon, Microsoft (China) Co refused to comment when asked by the Global Times Tuesday via e-mail, but did say that the company would target the fastest-growing sector - economical and practical smartphones - to enhance the Windows Phone share.

Selfie handsets could prove to be a promising niche market. "Such gadgets would receive a constant warm welcome from growing numbers of selfie fans, who have a strong need to take photographs of themselves with their phones," said Xue Yongfeng, an industry analyst with Analysys International.

But Xue was concerned that major smartphone makers would be unlikely to benefit that much from the selfie craze due to a lack of competitive image processing functions.

The term 'Selfie' was named by Oxford Dictionaries as its word of the year in 2013 and the craze hit its peak earlier this year.

According to an April report by China Youth Daily based on a survey of 34,993 Web users in China, 66.5 percent of participants were in the habit of taking selfies, and most of them were young women.

Liang Jia is one of them. For the 25-year-old Shanghai resident, the selfie phone is a necessity.

"I love selfies and want all my portraits to be beautiful. I used to retouch pictures with image processing apps on the phone by myself before posting them online, but my selfie phone can do this all automatically and quickly, saving me lots of effort," Liang told the Global Times Tuesday. "Now with the help of the selfie phone, I have no need to shoot down at a 45-degree angle to guarantee a good picture."

Liang has bought two selfie phones, both developed by Meitu Mobile, a Chinese company known for its line of image processing apps.

Although Liang found that her Meitu smartphone runs slowly, she said she still has no plan to replace it with other selfie devices made by well-established handset companies, such as Sony and OPPO, fearing that those hardware experts are not as skilled as Meitu in retouching pictures.

A report issued by Analysys International in late July said that Meitu Xiuxiu is currently the favorite image processing app in the Chinese market, with its monthly active users reaching 42.2 million in June.

In order to quell such concerns, some companies have inked tie-ups with image processing app developers. For instance, OPPO has unveiled its selfie phone U2S, equipped with photo retouching technology developed by China's Internet giant Baidu in May 2013.

Despite obtaining those fairly mature technologies, it will still be hard for the smartphone giant to snatch a big slice of the market, as perfectly integrating them with hardware is as difficult as the task of self-developing a feasible image processing system, which takes a great deal of time and effort, Xue told the Global Times.

"They may not see a good performance instantly in the selfie phone market, but having a selfie feature could be a selling point and help further enhance their brand value," he noted.