2006: The meteoric rise in the FBT share price finally begins

Camera Phone Shipments to Reach 910 million in 2009, Says IC Insights

January 2, 2006 -- Camera-equipped mobile phones are expected to drive the growth of the cellular handset market in the next few years, with their share increasing from about 45% in 2005 to 75% in 2009, and total shipment reaching 910 million, according to a study by IC Insights.

Although the cellular handset market in Japan is up 27% in 2005 (to 52 million units) as compared to 2002 (41 million units), the Japanese camera phone market has more than doubled, growing from 19 million units in 2002 to 47 million units in 2005, says the research firm.

Although the Japanese market was the "early adopter" of the camera phone, it is estimated that the Japanese market will represent only about 13% of the total demand for camera-equipped handsets in 2005, down from 95% just three years earlier in 2002. One of the pleasant surprises in the cellular phone industry over the past couple of years has been the significant popularity of the camera phone outside of Japan.

In early 2002, most camera phones offered 300,000-pixel images. In the third-quarter of 2003, Sony Ericsson's leading-edge MovaSO505i handset was equipped with a built-in camera featuring a resolution of more than one million pixels. In May of 2004, Casio introduced a camera-equipped cellular phone that offered 3.2 million pixel autofocus imaging capability. Samsung began shipping its SCH-770, the world's first 7.4 million-pixel camera-equipped cell phone in mid-2005!

The high-resolution (i.e. higher than1Mpixel) versions of camera phones are forecast to go from representing only about 4% of the 2004 camera phone market to almost 95% of the market in 2009. Moreover, most of the high-resolution camera phones sold in 2009 are expected to have higher than 2Mpixel capability.