Gateway planning 2, 4 and 5mpix digicams
By
Mike Tomkins
(Thursday, August 14, 2003 - 05:04 EDT)
An article on the website of Ziff Davis' eWEEK predicts that both Dell and Gateway will follow competitor HP into the digital camera market.
According to the eWeek article, Gateway's top digital camera model will be a 5 megapixel digital camera called the DC-T50 that the company claims "will be slightly more powerful" than HP's just-announced HP Photosmart 945. That camera features 5.1 megapixels and an 8x optical zoom lens, which would make the DC-T50 quite a camera, if true...
Two other models are planned - the 4.1 megapixel DC-M40, and the 2.1 megapixel DC-T20. The likelihood is that all three cameras will be announced by Thanksgiving, and be on the market by Christmas. Little info is given on Dell's plans in the article, but we'd expect them to attempt to match or better their long-time rival.
Don't expect the cameras to actually be designed or manufactured by either company, however. Even HP, a company more associated with designing complex products than Dell or Gateway, has cooperated on many of its cameras with outside companies like Pentax. Both Dell and Gateway meanwhile have mostly concentrated on selling their own-branded PCs and third-party peripherals until just recently. It is one thing to get into a market like inkjet printers, and quite another to step into manufacturing complex digital cameras - we'd expect both companies will either partner with a known name in digital imaging, or probably more likely will have their cameras sourced from a Taiwanese manufacturer.
Still, it will be interesting to see if the prediction is true, and a camera as complex as the Photosmart 945 is offered by Gateway.
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