Qualcomm buys into a mobile camera firm

MOBILE CHIP DESIGNER Qualcomm has announced it has splashed out the cash on a miniature optics firm.

The strategic investment in Anteryon will allow Qualcomm access to the firm's miniature optical module production techniques and facilities, helping it boost the image capture capabilities of mobile devices running its chips. Anteryon produces a range of miniature optical products, though Qualcomm decided to concentrate on the firm's Waferoptics technology when announcing the deal.

It's not surprising that Qualcomm is interested in Waferoptics, since the technology promises a reduction in cost, smaller sensors and smaller lenses. Frederic Rombaut, managing director of Qualcomm Ventures Europe said that the deal will "dramatically improve miniaturization and cost reduction of [the] camera module" and proclaimed that it will bring forward "a new generation of camera phones and handheld devices".

One hopes that this will finally lead phone manufacturers to concentrate on creating lenses large enough to capture noise-free images rather than spin the meaningless marketing figure of megapixels.

This announcement builds upon Qualcomm's recent announcement that it will be shipping a dual-core version of its Snapdragon processor, initially running at 1.2GHz. The current single-core version of the chip has proved to be popular with device manufacturers and is found in a number of mobile devices, including the Nexus One and Dell's Streak.

Qualcomm claimed that its dual-core chip will support 1080p video encoding and decoding, meaning the onus is now on the recording device to capture images of worthwhile quality, and it's banking on Anteryon delivering that capability. µ