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Will.i.am's iPhone accessories to 'turn smartphones into genius phones'
Musician and entrepreneur Will.i.am has announced plans for his new consumer electronics and app venture i.am+
The Black Eyed Peas star and entrepreneur Will.i.am is well known as an evangelist for new technology. Next week will see the global launch of his iPhone hardware, which he claims 'will turn your smartphone into a genius-phone’.
The first product from his new consumer electronics and app venture i.am+ is an accessory that clips onto an iPhone and transforms the eight megapixel smartphone camera into a 14 megapixel camera, which it is claimed dramatically enhances the clarity and definition of your photographs. Speaking exclusively to The Daily Telegraph, he says: ‘We have our own sensor and a better flash. You dock you phone into our device and it turns you smartphone into a genius-phone. We take over the camera.’
The camera will be the first of a series of digital products that bear his name – to support them, he has invested in what he calls ‘digital real estate’ online. He now owns the domain www.i.am. Users of i.am+ accessories will be given individual online profiles, for example www.i.am/Will.
Pricing will be announced next week at a launch in London.
The multi-Grammy-award-winning singer and musician described how he came up with the idea for the camera attachment at a photo shoot in London in 2008. ‘I was just hanging out afterwards, and one of the models took an iPhone picture, which circulated the planet before the shoot was even over,’ he says. ‘I took one of the photographer’s lenses and held it up on my [phone] and said “imagine this one day”. Then I said: “I’m going to do this”.'
Will.i.am has developed a reputation for having big ideas concerning technological innovation. In 2008, he was transmitted into the CNN newsroom in the form of a hologram to talk about the US election; in August this year one of his songs, Reach for the Stars, was beamed back from Mars when NASA’s Curiosity Rover landed; last year he was hired by the computer firm Intel as its ‘director of creative innovation’.
The first i.am+ camera makes an appearance in the music video for Scream and Shout, a collaborative single for Will.i.am and Britney Spears that is included on the former’s solo album release #willpower.
Apple has granted i.am+ a development licence to produce and sell the camera accessory and camera app for the iPhone 4 and iPhone 5, but Will.i.am says that a larger range of tech hardware will follow.
The debut series of i.am+ camera accessories will be officially launched at a press conference in London on Wednesday 28 November. Selfridges will sell the products exclusively from early December.
An interview with Will.i.am will appear in ST Technology on Sunday