Sony has tried time and time again to compete with Apple’s premium iPhone lineup with little success and in turn, has seen their marketshare continuously shrink. Fortunately for them, Apple’s continued strength in mobile means more money for the company’s device division which is responsible for creating the image sensors that are found in iPhone. Speaking to analysts during their Q3 FY15 earnings call, Sony CFO Kenchiro Yoshida had this to say:

Well, for next year, our so-called dual lens – dual camera platform will be launched by, we believe, from major smartphone players. However, as I said previously, recently, our smartphone market is growing and particularly, our high-end smartphone market is now slowing down. So, that may impact the demand or production schedule of dual camera smartphones by the major smartphone manufacturers. So, we believe the real start, the takeoff of smartphone with dual lens camera will be in the year of 2017.

Let’s talk more after the jump.

The advantages of a dual lens camera (mockup can be see above) are in that

by using two lenses that have different focal lengths – for example, the first lens is wide-angle and the second lens has 5x zoom. Then, when taking a picture of an object further away you would simply switch lenses to ‘zoom’ in. The second main benefit is better low-light performance, by using two parallel lenses with their own sensors.

Now, it’s not a fact that Apple is this ‘major’ smartphone supplier but seeing how Sony doesn’t provide components to Samsung, it’s likely a safe bet. Though a simplistic way of looking at things, two lenses means that Sony can now certainly make more money per units sold to Apple as component cost rise due to the more complex nature of the lens. With a major redesign in store with iPhone 7, it’s also a safe bet that Apple will again have a blockbuster device on their hands.

This translates into good news for Sony’s bottom line, seeing how Apple will likely sell over 100 million iPhone 7 units during its lifetime. If Apple sticks to their current release pattern, we’ll see the iPhone 7s the year after with an improved camera sensor based on the iPhone 7 components while the older device sticks around as a more entry tear unit. Considering that Apple is a priority over the company’s own smartphone division, I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t see Sony Xperia models adapt to a dual-lens design before some time in 2017 if there is to be a supply constraint.

Discuss:

Do you think this is good news for Sony’s bottom line?

[Via MacRumors]