High-End Cell Phones Ride Wave of Development

The market share of high-end mobile phones that enable one to take photographs of 1 million pixels has risen to two digits this year. Multi functional phones that contain the basic functions such as sound and communication function with other specified ones such as game and MP3 functions are launching as well.
Camera phones first appeared in July 2000 and with pixels of only 350,000, but a camera phone of 1.3 million pixels was introduced at the end of the previous year and since then standards have rapidly developed. Many new models of 2 million pixel mobile phones appeared this June and a month later, Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics and Pantech & Curitel launched mobile phones of 3 million pixels in July. Mega pixel phone markets are growing rapidly as well.

Mega pixel phones of Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics and Pantech & Curitel cost about W500,000, but demand is growing fast among the young generation who wants to possess the most up-dated products. Mobile phone producers say domestic sales of mega pixel phones in July was more than 1 million units. (Samsung Electronics: 447,400 units, LG Electronics: 279,800 units, Pantech & Curitel: 295,000 units.)

Kim Heang-woo, executive director of Samsung, said, "The Introduction of mega pixel phones means mobile phones now have good resolution and functions as digital cameras." He added, "Camera phones of 5 million mega pixels will be launched by the end of this year."

MP3 mobile phones that enable one to listen to music by storing MP3 music files inside the phone and sales are also increasing as well. Until this year, the memory holding capacity of mobile phones was not that high, which let the users install a small amount of an MP3 files, but the price of flash memory chips went down significantly this year and MP3 mobile phones, which allows the users to save more than 30 songs, are being introduced. Mobile phone producers estimate that the number of MP3 phones that were sold this year was about 700,000 units.

On the other hand, specialized function phones such as game phones and finger print reading phones are being introduced as high-end mobile phones. LG Electronics recently introduced its new finger print reading phone in early August that strengthens security while using mobile banking services.

Via:english.chosun.com