Picture it small

PARIS: A new consumer electronics product, whose size is the length of a human finger and the width of two, combines five features that have not been available before in a single ultra-portable device: a digital camera, a voice recorder, a Web cam, a USB flash drive and a video camera.

When I first saw the 5-in-1 eDVR, all I could wonder was: Why? Yes, we seem to have a hankering these days for Swiss-Army-knife-like gadgets that can handle numerous functions, but why these particular five? Who is the target market?

As it turns out. the Taiwan-made combo-camera has no market - except its designer, the chip company STMicroelectronics. ST gives out the 5-in-1 to contacts and potential customers to demonstrate the possibilities of its miniature sensor technology, which is used in microcameras and other imaging products.

The first microcamera product from ST, a Geneva-based company with French and Italian parentage, was not a camera at all, but Microsoft's optical mouse.

"What you have inside an optical mouse is a small camera," said Jean-Yves Gomez, the general manager of ST's imaging division and the man who his handlers call "Mr. Microcamera."

"It's not much of a camera - two pixels - but it's a camera."

From there, ST went on to provide the sensor technology for Logitech's Web cams and then moved to the cameras inside cellphones, which can now reach a resolution of 5 megapixels. ST shipped more than 78 million microcameras last year.

Gomez predicted that about 60 percent of cellphones sold this year will contain at least one camera, up from about 50 percent last year, approaching the 70 to 80 percent level that he considers market saturation.

Why at least one camera? Besides the one we are already used to, most third-generation cellphones have a separate tiny camera for videoconferencing.

If anything, ST - the world's fifth-largest chipmaker behind Intel, Samsung, Texas Instruments and Infineon - is known for its integrated circuits business. But since 2000, it has carved out a specialty, after the acquisition of a Scotland company, in the CMOS sensor technology used in mini-cameras.

The traditional CCD technology that is used in big-megapixel cameras is very difficult to shrink to a size small enough for thin and flat cellphones, Gomez said. CMOS, by contrast, can be easily made in miniature, although it is difficult for CMOS lenses to achieve resolutions higher than 5 megapixels.

"CCDs will always be big and power-consuming," Gomez said. "Phones with CCDs are a niche market."

Gomez expects the quality of photos taken with cellphones will top out at about 5 megapixels.

With Micron and Samsung as its major competitors in the microcamera, microsensor business, two-thirds of ST's imaging products are used in cellphones. Behind phones are digital cameras, computer mice, camcorders and toys.

But Gomez sees the future in new kinds of imaging and sensors: medical endoscopy, and light and color sensing.

ST last month introduced the first integrated circuit with light and color sensors, made for products like the screens of DVD players, camcorders, digital cameras, handheld computers and laptop computers.

With these sensors, the screen displays will automatically sense and adjust to changes in the surrounding light - from airplane-cabin to sandy-beach brightness - while reducing power consumption and saving battery life.

Of course, ST only designs and makes the chips. Consumer electronics manufacturers need to buy the systems and build them into their gadgets and devices before we can take advantage of ST's expertise in micro-sized, low-cost imaging sensors.

If one of those consumer electronics makers managed to add an optical wireless mouse and ambient light and color sensors to the 5-in-1 - now that would be a product with a market.