Sadavyk
2007-06-22, 11:31
An impressive 500 million camera phones were sold worldwide in 2006, up from just 85 million units in 2003. CMOS image sensors were found in the vast majority of those shipments, beating CCD technology by a huge margin. Nokia was the world's number one vendor last year -- it sold two times more camera phones than all the top 6 digital still camera (DSC) brands combined. By 2011, one-third of the world's total population will own a camera phone. Many of those handsets will be packed with advanced features such as flashlights, autofocus and optical zoom. Such feature-rich models will help the camera phone industry to generate wholesale revenues well over US$100 billion by the end of the decade. Firms mentioned in this report include Nokia, Samsung, Canon, Sony, Olympus, Nikon, Micron and Omnivision.