The Evolution of the Camera Phone
Posted: Saturday, May 07, 2005
by glong
http://www.rightmobiles.com
With the release soon of the Samsung SCH-V770 which takes the camera phone to new heights with a 7 mega pixel digital camera and a 16 million-color Display I thought we should take a brief look at how far we have come over the years as far as Camera Phones go.
2000/2001
The first camera phone was the J-SH04 introduced by SHARP and J-Phone in Japan in November 2000. "The J-SH04 was the industry's first mobile phone to feature an integrated 110,000-pixel CMOS image sensor for taking digital photos. It was followed by the industry's first application of a 65,536-color semi-transmissive TFT LCD on a flip type phone (J-SH05). Both models were supplied to J-Phone Co. Ltd., and raised Sharp's presence in the mobile phone market".
Jun. J-Phone announced that it has sold more than 5 million units of Sha-mail (camera phone) handsets. J-Phone had 12.5 million subscribers at this point, and over 40% users have camera phones.
May. DoCoMo released the first i-shot (camera) phone, SH251i (sharp).
July. DoCoMO released additional two i-shot devices, D251i (Mitsubishi) and F251i (Fujitsu).
Sep. Vodafone released J-Phone like camera phone, GX10 (sharp).
Oct. Multi-media research announced that the market share of Sharp's phone (in Japanese market) jumped from 7.8% (1H 2001) to 14.7% (1H 2002). The key contributor was SH251i, the first camera phone from DoCoMo.
Nov. DoCoMo announced that their 504is series phones will also have built-in camera.
2003
Jan. DoCoMo announced that it sold more than 5 million units of iShots (DoCoMo version of camera phones). It took only seven months to achieve this number (it took over 18 months for J-Phone to get to this number).
Feb. Sony announced that it will start mass production of 1M-pixel CCD for camera phones.
May. KDDI released the world first 1M-pixel camera, A5401CA (Casio)
Apr. Gartner Japan announced that the percentage of camera phone has increased from 15.7% (1Q 2002) to 57.3% (4Q 2002). Sharp sold more camera phones than anybody else, selling 5,195,800 units in 2002 - 36.2% market share. Sanyo was number two (12.9%) and NEC was the third (11.3%).
Apr. DoCoMo announced that it sold more than 9 million units of i-shot phones, rapidly approaching J-Phone's number. At this point, J-Phone has released a little over 9-million units of camera phones, and KDDI has released a little bit over 4-million units.
Apr. DoCoMo announced that it sold more than 10 million units of i-shot devices (in only 11 months), exceeding the number of camera phones by J-Phone.
May. J-Phone released J-SH53 (Sharp), which is the first 1M-pixel camera phones by J-Phone.
May. Sharp announced that it has sold more than 10 million units of camera phones, eight models for J-Phone, three models for DoCoMo and one model for Vodafone.
May. DoCoMo released DoCoMo's first 1M-pixel camera phone, D505i .
2004
In 2004 Camera phones became widely available and manufacturers including Sony Ericsson released phones like the K700i and later the S700i with 1.2 megapixels. Other manufacturers like Samsung, Motorola and Nokia released phones that had the same quality as earlier digital cameras and the technological progress was showing in the consumer reports with many people trading their older cell phones in for the latest Camera Phones. Cell Phone sales in 2004 reached mega proportions internationally and the world was ready for more.
2005
Now in 2005 we are starting to see some huge leaps with phones like the release soon of the Samsung SCH-V770 which takes the camera phone to new heights with a 7 mega pixel digital camera and a 16 million-color Display. Nokia have the Nokia N70 And the The N90 which boasts a 2 megapixel camera with autofocus and 20x digital zoom. The N90 has two screens where both the 128x128 pixels, 65k color display and the main display 352x516 pixels and 262k colors can be used as a viewfinder for the camera.
2006
In 2006 we will see significant improvements of both the camera phone and the technology behind it, making our cell phone just as good as an expensive digital camera in bringing out a fine details of professional photography. Also in 2006, I'm sure Video phones will be vastly improved to be competitive with digital video cameras.
About The Author
Gary Long is the Executive Editor of RightMobiles.com which is an international mobile phone portal.
This article may be freely distributed as long as the author's bio is included with an active link to http://www.rightmobiles.com
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