Rosenblatt Securities Forecasts 13MP Front Cameras in Smartphones

Barron's: Rosenblatt Securities‘s analyst Brian Blair forecasts 13MP selfie cameras in this year's smartphones: "The basic idea is that front facing cameras on smartphones have generally been VGA – 1MP over the last 5 years. We believe that this is shifting in 2015 to 5MP — 13MP sensors for front-facing cameras. We expect to initially see this at the high end of the market, but we anticipate the trend will quickly filter into mid-tier models as well. We recently saw evidence of this trend at CES with a few models that had 5MP – 13MP front facing cameras (from Samsung and HTC notably) and we expect MWC in early March to showcase numerous additional models. This trend is critical, as it meaningfully lifts dollar content per handset and raises overall ASPs/ revenues, and provides a bump to gross margins as well."

One of the new smartphones demoing this trend at CES 2015 is Saygus V2 with 21MP rear camera and 13MP front camera, both equipped with OIS: