Camera phones are hot in Japan, and heating up elsewhere in the world. Since the wireless carrier J-Phone introduced the J-SH04 – the first popular handset equipped with a camera module – the market has evolved rapidly. As of early 2003, a camera-enabled phone is no longer something special for Japanese consumers: it is becoming a near-standard feature in new handsets. Marketplace demand for image quality that is better than “just good enough” – a level of quality that will make image-enabled cell phones a threat to entry-level digital still cameras – has now touched off competition between CMOS- and CCD-based sensors as the image-sensing device of choice in wireless handsets.
This report will describe the evolution of the market for camera phones in Japan; examine the CMOS vs. CCD rivalry, together with other areas of technology development related to image-enabled wireless handsets; look at the evolution of markets elsewhere in Asia and Europe; and provide brief descriptions of camera phones that have been recently introduced in Japan and Asia. Tables provided with the article provide further data on image sensors used in image-enabled handsets, and on camera phones currently available on the market.