Las Vegas — SonyEricsson plans to expand its Cyber-shot camera phone lineup this year with at least one and possibly three new 3G W-CDMA models packed with megapixels.
The 8.1-megapixel C905, announced last year, will be available in the U.S. at the end of the second quarter, said Jon Mulder, head of North American product marketing. He called it a “big focus phone for us” but didn’t say whether it would be sold unlocked or through a carrier. Features include face detection, GPS and Wi-Fi.
A 12.1-megapixel model, temporarily called the Idou, is a touch-screen model based on the Symbian Series 60 OS. Features include 3.5-inch widescreen, Wi-Fi, GPS, face detection, smile shutter and Xenon flash. It will be available globally in the second half, but the company isn’t certain whether it will be available at that time in the U.S.
The 5-megapixel C903 features face detection and smile shutter but uses LED flash. It will launch in the early third quarter in many global markets, with U.S. availability also targeted for the early third quarter, Mulder said.
The 3G camera phone with the most megapixels to date in the U.S. is Samsung’s 8-megapixel Memoir touch-screen phone available through T-Mobile. Other U.S. camera phones top out at 5 megapixels.
