What does the future hold at Photokina 2012?

Samsung

More and more people are using smartphones for their photography, and in a world where the most popular means of sharing images is social media, it's easy to see the advantages. Compact cameras need to catch up with the connectivity of smartphones pretty quickly, and Samsung is going further and faster than anyone else to make that happen.

The latest range of high-end compacts and CSCs now have not only built in Wi-fi, but a user interface that makes easy work of emailing your photos and videos, or uploading them to YouTube, Facebook and other social media, or backing them up to the cloud, or beaming them wirelessly onto your TV.
What you can't do is connect to the web using 3G, though you can hook up to a Samsung smartphone and let the phone do the publishing.

What is needed, and surely can't be far away, is a camera with built-in 3G, and given its unique position of strength in the phone and camera markets, Samsung will be the company to do it. But the camera should have more than just a 3G connection - Samsung should give it a full Android interface. After all, Polaroid has already produced one in the US. Not only are millions of people familiar with it but users would be able to download apps direct to the camera which add features such as effects filters, HDR and time-lapse.

Whenever we've asked Samsung about any plans for such a camera we've been met with a nod and a wink and a ‘watch this space' so it's not a matter of if but when.
It would be great to see such a camera at Photokina, or even the IFA show just beforehand, but Samsung may choose to wait until the more mass-market CES show in Las Vegas in January 2013.