OXFORD, United Kingdom—While the cost of integrating a camera into a cell phone is only US$10, silicon chip developer STMicroelectronics has complained that European terminal makers are resisting the move to multimedia messaging service (MMS). The company, which recently acquired the camera-on-a-chip pioneer Vision of Edinburgh, said it has now driven down the cost by producing a CMOS single-chip camera incorporating both image sensors and processing circuitry.
European operators are claiming that MMS, and in particular phone-to-phone image transfers, would be a major revenue earner for their recently deployed 2.5-generation (2.5G) networks. Observers have referenced Vodafone’s Chief Executive Chris Gent as specifically pointing to the success of camera phones in Japan as something that would be a big contributor to U.K. revenues.
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However, despite the complaints from STMicroelectronics, the delays in getting the image technology into the European market are also attributed to the failure to coordinate a market launch by all the parties involved. Vodafone has not yet made its network capable of handling phone-to-phone image transfer, but it claims it will have the capability added to the network by end-December, while T-Mobile plans to launch its service in the United Kingdom, Austria and Germany later this month.
