January 28, 03

Taiwan's Dbtel Technology will roll out a mobile phone with a mounted digital still camera under its own brand in March, further a handset with a built-in digital still camera in April and another own-brand handset with a 1,5 million pixel built-in digital still camera in September, the local Economic Daily News reported.

Dbtel is the only Taiwan company, licensed to sell own-brand mobiles in China, did not disclose yet into which countries it will export these novelties. A spokesperson was only quoted as saying, the products will be ready whenever a market is ready to receive it.

According to a market research form Strategy Analytics, citing statistcs from January to end September 2002, 9.5 million camera phones were sold worldwide , out of them 7,9 million in gadget-conscious Japan, with Sharp being the largest vendor.

Irving Chen, president of prominent Taiwan mobile phone maker Benq estimates that camera-equipped handsets will 10-15% of total handset sales this year. That would come to between 42 and 63 million units based in Gartner Dataquest's projection of global shipments of 420 million handsets in 2003.