Cell phone cameras growing up

Those mini-cameras that look like decorations on one side of mobile handsets are not just toys anymore. With their rapid evolution, miniature digital cameras that used to be treated as appendixes on handsets to appeal to fun-loving young consumers are now threatening the real digital camera market. Pantech and Curitel Communications, Inc., a mobile handset maker, unveiled last week a mobile phone with a 1.3 megapixel digital camera attached. The term means that there are 1.3 million separate pieces of information about the picture stored digitally. That 1.3 megapixel figure puts the quality of the camera squarely in the lower end of the consumer market for the devices. Samsung Electronics recently introduced a mobile phone that also can be used as a video camera-recorder. Handset makers say they plan to introduce mobile handsets with digital cameras that boast 2-megapixel quality early next year. “With a camera of 1 megapixels, you can print pictures that are not so different from those taken with film cameras,” said No Sun-seok, an executive at Pantech and Curitel. While that may be somewhat of an exaggeration, snapshot-size prints would show acceptable quality. Mr. No predicted that cell phone cameras would begin to eat into the market for stand-alone digital cameras. The rising standards for cell phone cameras and the new competition between telephones and cameras is one illustration of “digital convergence,” the blurring of category borders between digital devices. Market observers predicted that sales of camera-equipped cell phones would grow while the lower end of the digital camera market collapses. Camera firms would then shift their resources to making higher-quality and better-performing cameras with zoom lenses, flash units and other amenities that cell phone cameras cannot match now. In gadget-crazed Korea, industry officials say, sales of digital cameras are expected to reach about 700,000 this. That may be impressive, but sales of cell phones are running at a pace of about 7 million for the year. In Japan, where camera phones of 1-megapixel quality hit the market earlier this year, sales of lower-end digital cameras, under 2 megapixels, plummeted 69 percent in the first half of the year. LG, which imports Canon cameras, predicted 20 percent growth in digital camera sales next year, down from 80 percent growth in 2003. Mobile phone makers are not resting on their laurels, predicting 4-megapixel cell phone cameras soon. But in that area, the competition will be tough. Bang Il-seok, the head of Olympus Korea, noted problems with cell-phone battery life and high charges for downloading photos from cell phones over wireless Internet links. “I doubt whether attaching high-quality digital cameras to handsets would make commercial sense,” he said. by Cho Min-geun