(CNN) -- Facebook's billion-dollar purchase of Instagram this week may have been the first time that many Facebookers heard of the tech-world darling, which lets users turn their phone photos into sleek-looking, stylized images with a single touch. The acquisition shined a light on what's emerging as a nearly incontrovertible truth in tech circles: Mobile is the future of photography and the tools used to enhance and share phone-generated images have value that is only expected to climb. Instagram isn't the only player in that field, but it had quickly become its all-star. Barely a year-and-a-half old, Instagram had already racked up 30 million users on Apple's mobile system before opening up to Android users last week. Another 5 million signed up in less than a week, setting the table for Facebook to gobble up what until Monday was emerging as its prime competitor in mobile photo-sharing.
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Facebook's Instagram purchase shines light on emerging mobile photo market
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Instagram had racked up more than 30 million users in a year and a half
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Photogs say the appeal is in making simple photos look fancy with little effort
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Apps like Cinemagram, Piictu, Pixable and Hipstamatic also stand to gain
Some early adopters complained that @placeholder snatching up their favorite app takes some of the indie shine off of it.