Motorola Kodak camera phone - a mobile phone from Motorola
Kodak have announced that they are working on a new 5 megapixel CMOS sensor that will find its way into new Motorola camera-phones at the end of the year.

The new phones will likely be branded Motorola-Kodak phones, and will be designed to enable Motorola to compete on a more equal footing with the more technologically superior phones of its competitors.

Whereas other mobile phone manufacturers such as Nokia and LG have relied on incorporating superior lens technology from Carl Zeiss and Schneider-Kreuznach repsectively, none have been able to match the brand power of Sony Ericsson’s CyberShot phones, which don’t just draw on Sony’s famed CyberShot range of cameras, they also offer superior photo quality to their competitors.

All this is changing, though, as Casio have recently announced a Casio Exilim-branded camera-phone (the Casio W53CA), which not only has superior quality to Sony Ericsson’s camera-phones, it also comes with the Exilim brand, which is at least as well-known (and well-respected) as Sony’s CyberShot brand.

Motorola have realised that if they’re to compete in this market and drag their mobile phone division into profitability, they need to raise their game in the features race, and this means not only improving the megapixellage of their camera-phones (their current top model sports a measly 2 megapixels), they must also improve the quality of the phones’ cameras.

The best way to do this, of course, is by partnering with a well known camera company, and what better company to partner with than Kodak, which is known the world over.

This also helps Kodak, who are pulling out of the low end camera market, as they, too are struggling to compete. The partnership is therefore win-win, as it gives Kodak a new market in which to expand, and Motorola’s new camera-phones instant credibility.

Speaking at the JPMorgan Technology Conferenec in Boston, Kodak President Antonio Perez said “Our CMOS sensors have been well advancing for many years. And now we will have the ability to embed the sensor in the phone with all the richness we have with our imaging software. It will allow us to make the sensor, the most important part of the camera, able to manage the light, color, and the like.”

Expect new Motorola-Kodak phones to be realeased later in 2007.

[Source: Crave, EngadgetMobile]