Quad-Camera is the most popular camera setup for smartphones

London, 1 December 2020: Smartphones with Quad Cameras have accounted for the largest portion of total smartphone sales in Q3’20 according to Omdia’s latest smartphone model market tracker. 



Smartphones with triple cameras fell to second place for the first time since it took the first place in fourth quarter of 2019.

Since the release of Dual Camera, the number of smartphone lenses has been increasing rapidly. Dual cameras surpassed single cameras for the first time in the third quarter of 2018. After five quarters later, triple cameras overtook the position from Dual Camera. 

The advantage of multi-camera is that it upgrades the camera feature by providing such as bokeh effect, wide angle and zoom. In the past, smartphone cameras were a competition to increase the number of pixels, but recently, the competition move to the number of camera lenses.

Multi-camera is no longer a premium feature. Multi-camera has already become a basic feature that can be easily found in mid-/low-priced smartphones. The reason for the rapid increase of the number of smartphone camera lenses is that the combination of low-resolution lenses in mid/low-priced smartphones has increased. In this case, multi-cameras are used as marketing point rather than improving camera performance. Low-resolution lenses such as 2MP, 3MP, and 5MP are mainly used for low-end smartphones.

 Chinese OEMs are more aggressive on multi-cameras. Among the top seven global OEMs, Xiaomi has the highest penetration of quad cameras. Quad camera accounts for 60% of the total smartphone shipments in the third quarter. During the same period, the proportions of Dual and Triple were 14% and 8%, respectively. Realme, a low-cost smartphone brand separated from Oppo, also reported that the proportion of quad cameras accounted for more than half. Realme shipped all smartphones with multi-cameras without smartphones with single cameras in the third quarter.

Other Chinese OEMs, Oppo, Vivo, and Huawei also showed a high share of Multi cameras. Quad camera accounted for 44% of Oppo’s smartphone shipments, while it was triple camera that has highest share in Huawei and vivo.

Samsung, which has the world's No. 1 smartphone market share, is also expanding the adoption of multi-cameras for mid- to low-end models. The shares of Quad and Triple camera were the same at 35% of total shipments.

On the other hand, Apple still ships half of iPhones with dual camera and only 17% of them with triple camera. However, Apple's multi-camera share is expected to increase significantly in the fourth quarter as the newly released iPhone 12 series adopts dual cameras for low-end and quad cameras for pro models.

 

-ENDS-

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