Form-Factor Transformations: What About The Camera Phone?

Continued from 'Imaging Beyond Pixels: Form-Factor Transformations'….

The camera phone is a wild card in this whole imaging picture; to what degree will it obsolete standalone still and/or video cameras? As you probably already suspect, silicon and software suppliers to the camera phone application are sanguine about this potential trend (especially when you consider that an increasing percentage of all camera phone models contain two image sensors; one facing away from the user for picture-taking, the other pointed at the user for videoconferencing), while camera building block manufacturers are more pessimistic that the camera phone will be a serious short- or long-term competitor. See, for example, the contrasting perspectives in these two companies' quotes:

We saw this happen in the PC industry – at some point the MHz war peaked and the focus of the CPU vendors went to developing multiple cores or low power CPUs. Similarly in the image processing world, we’ll at some point see the “mega pixel war” ending. The major question is at what point. A VGA (0.3MP) resolution is not enough, but starting at 3MP to 5MP consumers may be happy with the number of pixels, and the upper limit will mainly be driven by the cell phone form factors, power consumption, and cost. The majority of the world’s cell phones today are shipped with a 1.3MP camera. They do not provide good enough image quality in any light conditions, hence consumers are not using them. While walking the halls of the CES convention, I spotted various people taking pictures with their 3.2MP Cell Phone Camera (CPC). They were happy to use their 3.2MP CPC since it provided adequate image quality….Consumers have not been using their CPC because they have not received good enough quality nor have required features been offered. We believe that consumers will use their CPC if it provides them good enough quality, and if it has many of the same features available in their point and shoot digital still cameras.
-Pulin Desai, Director of Marketing, Nethra Imaging

Since inception, Nethra has been actively promoting image quality to customers, but really it’s been since the beginning of 2007 that customers have been pushing us to provide more and more “digital-still-camera” functionality so they can promote handsets that provide this experience….We are very excited about the future of the “great imaging experience” — both still capture and video. With handset manufacturers implementing and delivering 3MP solutions this year, consumers will soon have handsets with the level of image quality they desire.
-Ramesh Singh, CEO and President, Nethra Imaging

I think [that] despite the manufacturers' claims of considerable overlap between camera phones and DSC performance, we're seeing an acceptance that a converged device means some compromise somewhere and that in the case of the camera function, performance is nowhere near that of a real camera. Consumers understand that.The enormous volumes of camera phones are driving the development of CMOS sensors, and [of] module miniaturization and standardization that put a decent camera into every phone. Other features are seeking phone consumers' attention. I don't see the mix changing much back towards picture taking, with a few high-end exceptions.
- Stuart Boyd, Product Line Director for High-Speed Signal Processing, Analog Devices

Zoran supplies approximately 25% of the total worldwide demand for still image camera processors with its Coach product line, so I was particularly interested to get the company's perspective on the upstart camera phone competitor. During my lunch meeting with company representatives at PMA on Saturday, Mehran Ayat (Senior Marketing Manager for Digital Camera Products) responded to my question with a completely unexpected (but, upon further reflection, logical) answer. He effused that, in fact, camera phones were the best thing that could ever happen to standalone cameras.

When I asked him to further explain his opinion, he pointed out that many consumers hadn't yet made the leap to digital; they still owned film cameras, most of which permanently resided in desk and dresser drawers, unused and coated in dust. Camera phones enabled those consumers to reconnect with photography as a hobby, and to experience the fundamental advantages of digital imaging versus the silver halide-based predecessor. However, the feature limitations of camera phones became quickly apparent….thereby compelling these same consumers to subsequently purchase full-blown digital cameras.