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Sharp and TI team to cash-in on camera phones

Ben Charny CNET News.com

Published: 08 Jul 2003 14:42 BST

Texas Instruments and Sharp Electronics said on Monday they are teaming up to cash in on the expected surge in sales of camera-connected mobile phones.

By the end of the year, the two companies will begin selling new camera-phone technology to mobile-phone manufacturers. This will consist of a combination of Texas Instruments mobile-phone chips, Sharp miniature cameras and colour displays, and a set of camera-phone blueprints, they said in a joint statement.

The phones will use the world's most popular mobile phone standard, Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), according to a Texas Instruments spokesman.

Neither TI nor Sharp predicted when mobile phones based on their chips and reference designs would be ready for retail sale. They did not disclose financial details of the deal.

Camera phones debuted in Japan about two years ago along with new services such as photo emails, downloadable video clips and wireless videoconferencing. While the phones are wildly popular in Japan, mobile phone subscribers in Europe and the United States haven't shown nearly as much interest.

But analysts from IDC, a market research firm, believe that the advent of faster mobile-phone networks and better phones will spur interest in photo services. The analysts are predicting an 80 percent increase in camera-phone sales worldwide during the next two years.

With the move, TI has increased competitive pressure on chipmakers Intel and Motorola, which also sell chips to the world's biggest handset makers. A Texas Instruments spokesman and Christopher Chute, a senior analyst with IDC, said Sharp hasn't reached a similar deal with either Intel or Motorola. A Sharp spokesman could not immediately confirm this.

"For Texas Instruments, this gives them a strong 'in'" for the next generation of camera phones, Chute said.

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