Apple fans beware. The Android scourge is spreading, and fast.
The latest infection point out of North Asia - the humble point and shoot camera.
This is the Nikon CoolPIX S800C - a respectable 16 megapixel sensor, a 10x zoom, WiFi, and most importantly an Android brain.
'Now it might look a pretty innocent and simple camera, the kind of thing your middle-aged, unmarried aunt might break out at a family barbecue this summer. But do not be fooled. This new model from Nikon is in fact a Trojan horse for the Google camp to bring Android even closer to more consumers.'
And Nikon is not alone. Samsung too has just announced a new Android-powered Galaxy cam, borrowing heavily on the marketing appeal of its red-hot Galaxy android handsets.
Their camera takes this Android hybrid concept even further, rocking a SIM card slot for 3 and 4G mobile connectivity anywhere instead of just WiFi like the Nikon.
Like the so-called phablet, this phone-camera combo could become a new product class itself - call it the 'phamera.' That's right, you heard it here first. Talk about thinking outside the rectangle-shaped box. And once you've got one of these little puppies in your pocket, you'll probably get to thinking, 'Hey, how do I get Instagram on this thing?' Suddenly you find yourself keying in your credit card details into Google's play store, uploading pictures directly to Facebook, or perhaps even Google+ if you like your solitude, and before you know it BOOM...you're part of the droid empire.
Don't get me wrong, though. This is a good thing, a much needed shakeup. For too long, the Sonys and Canons of the world have been content to rule and thrive in their own little fiefdoms, hawking good hardware weighed down by clunky proprietary software.
And having Android apps on board doesn't have to mean just old-school film filters and heavy vignettes. This opens the door to 3rd-party developers who might dream up ideas beyond the original manufacturer's vision.
Take the camera hacker community. Dedicated to adding features and squeezing extreme performance out of existing cameras, if they were to go mainstream with paid apps on the play store instead of obscure, unauthorized downloads, it could help Android camera manufacturers outsell their closed-system competitors.
This 'phamera' concept is just starting now. But if it does take off, it could help reinvigorate the flagging point and shoot market and open another battleground in the bitter Apple versus Android war. Jon Gordon in Hong Kong for Reuters.
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