Is it predicted that periscope camera will become the standard of 20 19 high-end mobile phones?

In March, Huawei P30 Pro was equipped with a periscope camera, which supports 5x optical zoom,10x hybrid zoom and up to 50x digital zoom. In April, OPPO Reno achieved mass production, and its telephoto camera covered the angle of view from 16mm to 160 mm. The periscope camera officially opened a new stage of optical zoom for smart phones. However, will the periscope camera become the standard function of future mobile phone manufacturers, or is it just an option to take a differentiated route?

Advanced mobile phone photography function

With the domestic smart phone market becoming saturated and the shipment volume declining, the camera has always been the innovation direction of smart phones, and the innovation of mobile phone photography function has always been an opportunity in the competition of mobile phone stock. The pace of camera innovation is accelerating, and the all-round improvement and innovation of camera functions has become a hot spot in the market. Following the advanced mobile phone shooting functions such as optical anti-shake, 3D camera and multi-camera, periscope camera officially entered the stage this year.

Usually zoom is divided into digital zoom and optical zoom. Although both of them are helpful to enlarge distant objects in telephoto shooting, only optical zoom can support adding more pixels after the main body of the image is imaged, making the main body not only larger, but also relatively clearer. Usually, the larger the zoom factor, the more suitable for telephoto shooting. Digital zoom can only reduce the size of the original image and make the image larger on the LCD screen, but it does not help to clarify the details.

High-power optical zoom has always been the explosive demand of smart phone photography, but due to the thin and light characteristics of smart phones, the traditional camera module structure is difficult to meet the requirements of high-power optical zoom. By 20 18, major mobile phone brands began to introduce flagship machine with built-in optical zoom, but only Huawei Mate20 Pro has 3x optical zoom capability, and other models can only guarantee 2x optical zoom capability. Therefore, periscope camera has become a solution, which makes it possible to zoom at a long distance, and the photography function of mobile phones is also moving closer to professional cameras.

Due to the limitation of the thickness of the mobile phone, the focal length of the horizontally placed mobile phone camera is small and the optical zoom ability is limited. At present, the maximum optical zoom can reach 3 times. Periscope camera is different from the traditional vertical arrangement of dual-camera lenses. It is horizontally arranged in the mobile phone and has optical conversion components, which are composed of optical sensors, filters, rotating motors, lens groups, prisms and so on. It uses a special optical prism to refract light into the lens group to realize imaging, which can achieve higher optical zoom factor and make the shooting of distant objects clearer.

There is market space and demand

This concept is in the initial stage and needs further development.

From the perspective of market supply, periscope camera will be an important marketing highlight in the future mobile phone market, but it will take a long process of market penetration and popularization in the future. Huawei and OPPO have the advantages and foundation of big brands and will take the lead in accelerating the popularization of periscope cameras. Sun Yanbiao, president of the First Mobile Phone Research Institute, predicted that in 20 19 years, periscope cameras will become the standard of high-end flagship machine.

But it is foreseeable that there are not many manufacturers that can really do well at present. Because the cost of periscope camera itself is nearly 70 dollars, the price of mobile phone will definitely be more than 3500 yuan, which has certain cost pressure and market pressure. "Manufacturers including Apple also adopt the strategy of following China manufacturers in cameras, and Apple has been making standard products, which is difficult to bear the huge cost pressure of periscope cameras in the short term." Sun yanbiao said.

On the whole, periscope camera belongs to the initial stage driven by a new concept, and the popularity of periscope high-magnification zoom in the supply chain is still invisible. It will take some time to observe the market reaction. As an important product element of mobile phones, photography has been improving and upgrading, and high definition and high quality have always been the basic direction of upgrading. Periscope lens technology is not ideal at present, but the overall module is large, and the product shape design needs to be improved. "In the future, with the involvement of more products, periscope lens may be an important part of multi-camera combination technology, and I am personally optimistic about this." Li said to him.

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According to the relevant data of Qunzhi Consulting, it is estimated that the global shipment of smartphones with periscope cameras will be about 0./kloc-0. 50 billion units in 20 19, including Huawei P & amp； Mate series and OPPO Reno series will make great contributions. 20 19, the flagship products of each terminal are expected to be equipped with periscope to improve the technical content of independent brands. However, due to the technical difficulty and unsatisfactory climbing rate in the early stage, the market volume is limited to a certain extent and needs to be accumulated for a period of time.