November 15, 2006 – Contract manufacturer Flextronics Components Group announced yesterday its partnership with digital camera maker HP for Flextronics-designed mobile camera phones.
HP licensed its image processing technology to Flextronics to be used in their OEM camera phones. The image processing design will be the same as HP's digital cameras. In a move to bring photo quality standards to mobile phones, Flextronics and HP will collaborate for a period of five years.
“Flextronics is the ideal partner to harness the capabilities of HP’s digital imaging technology to open new markets,” said HP Imaging and Printing Group vice president Tara Bunch in yesterday’s press release. “This agreement is a breakthrough for the booming camera phone market because it will transform photos into higher quality images into keepsakes to share and print,” said Bunch.
Earlier this year, Singapore-based Flextronics gained increasing recognition in the U.S. digital camera market after Eastman Kodak Co. announced its discontinuation of manufacturing digital cameras and outsourced to Flextronics.
With an estimated 600 million camera phones shipped this year, according to the release, and another estimated 975 million in 2010, the camera phone market is on the rise.
The new Flextronics-manufactured camera phones will be available next year.
