One in six mobile phones sold last year had a digital camera in it, an almost five-fold increase over 2002, with Asian vendors leading the way, a survey showed on Monday. U.S.-based market research group Strategy Analytics said 84 million camera phones were sold, or 16 percent of the total handset market, compared with 18 million in 2002.
The camera phone market overtook the digital compact camera market, which amounted to 49 million units worldwide.
Pictures taken with a mobile phone are of much lower quality than those snapped with digital cameras, in part due to less advanced light sensor chips.
Mobile phones are also too small to contain lenses that can zoom and focus, although phones with such lenses could be on the market in the next few years.
Japan's NEC, which does not even show up in the overall top six of global handset vendors, topped the camera phone table with 13.1 million units shipped.
Finland's Nokia, the world's largest handset maker, came in second at 11 million units.
Samsung Electronics sold 10 million during the year. This is in line with the South Korean company's status as the world's overall number three handset maker.
Japan's Matsushita-owned Panasonic ended fourth with 9.2 million camera phones shipped. Like NEC, Panasonic is absent from the list of top six overall mobile phones vendors.
Japanese-Swedish Sony Ericsson sold 8.2 million units to distributors, its number five position slightly better than its performance as the world's number six seller of mobile phones behind South Korea's LG Electronics.
U.S.-based Motorola and Germany's Siemens were the handset manufacturers replaced by Japanese vendors NEC and Panasonic. Motorola and Siemens are the respective numbers two and four in the overall handset table. The market shares changed during the year, with Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson making up the top three of camera phone makers by the fourth quarter, benefiting from their brand names, scale and strong distribution channels with operators.
Investment bank UBS forecasts camera phone sales will rise to 44 percent of all mobile phones sold in 2004.
Research group Gartner says global handset sales could grow to 580 million units in 2004.
