Nokia sees HD video on cell phones in a few years

By Reuters

Published: December 5, 2007, 9:43 AM PST

TalkBackE-mailPrint del.icio.us Digg this

Video recording on cell phones is set to reach high-definition quality in a few years, an executive at the world's top cell phone maker, Nokia, said Wednesday.

"It's coming. Technically, we are a couple of years away," Nokia Chief Technology Officer Tero Ojanperä told Reuters in an interview. "It's still a few years away."

Cell phones have had cameras, and the ability to use them as camcorders, for more than five years, but only this year did Nokia start to sell a model, the N95, which records television-quality video.

Better quality could boost sales of pricey multimedia phones and also hit camcorder makers such as Panasonic, Samsung, and JVC, just as the success of camera phones from Nokia and Sony Ericsson has hurt the still-camera industry.

Nokia alone expects to sell about 200 million camera phones this year and aims to sell more than 250 million in 2008.

Ben Wood, head of research at CCS Insight, said phone vendors have several technical challenges ahead of them--video weighs on the battery life of power-hungry phones, and increasing the video quality affects the quality of the still camera.

"Video technology is there, but it has not reached huge momentum," Wood said.

Analyst Alan Brown of research firm Gartner said he estimated that 8 percent to 10 percent of cell phones might have HD video capability by 2010 or 2011. "I can't see it getting much bigger by then," he said.

U.S. chipmaker Broadcom on Tuesday said it had started limited shipments of its new single-chip decoder, which enables HD-quality video on cell phones, and Texas Instruments also has a prototype.

************************************