It is no surprise that smartphones in recent past have been stuffed with more and more cameras each year. We have to blame Apple with that with the launch of the iPhone 7 Plus and that led companies to add such cameras as ultrawides, telephotos, macros, depth sensing and even infrared cameras like in the OnePlus 8 Pro.
According to Counterpoint research, in Q1 2020, the penetration of quad-camera smartphones reached almost 20% of global smartphone shipments. That is a lot of smartphones out there with a lot of cameras and we see them at every price point.
“Although the strong growth momentum is expected to soften amid the pandemic fallout, thanks to the irreversible trend towards multi-camera setups and the spreading adoption of 3D sensing systems, the smartphone CIS segment will likely still register high-single-digit shipment growth in 2020, hitting an all-time high of close to 5.0 billion units.” Senior Analyst Ethan Qi, noted.
They specified that OPPO, Xiaomi, Huawei, and Samsung together accounted for 83% of the nearly 60 million quad-camera smartphone shipments during Q1. Realme was the most aggressive adopter of quad-camera designs with penetration reaching two-thirds of its shipments.
This continuous improvement and adoption of camera sensors have made the sales of image sensors for smartphones increase eightfold the past decade, reaching more than 4.5 billion units in 2019.
The share of quad- camera smartphone shipments is also pretty interesting for Q1 2020. OPPO is the leader with 25.3% of the toal followed by Xiaomi with 21.5% and Samsung is next with 20.9% of the total.
Realme leads the pack with their quad-camera configuration penetration with 66.1% followed by OPPO (57.7%) and Xiaomi with 45.8%.
I don’t see this trend of packing more cameras into a phone dying any time soon. Companies are scrambling to make sure they offer as many features as they can on an incredibly saturated smartphone market.
