At the moment, digital video cameras take poor quality stills, and digital still cameras take poor quality video (largely because they have to compromise quality in order to perform all that interpolation on several frames per second).
Since a final 8- or 5-megapixel photo usually contains enough detail for printing and is easier to store and transmit, it's possible to use those 41 megapixels to zoom in or stabilize the image without resorting to interpolation and losing information.