Nokia To Improve Smartphone Imaging With Scalado Acquisition

Nokia has announced the completion of its takeover of Swedish imaging firm Scalado and will create a new centre of imaging excellence in Lund, Sweden.

The Finnish manufacturer will acquire Scalado’s technologies, intellectual property and expertise and will use its new assets to boost the imaging capabilities of its smartphones – although it already has a phone with a 41Mpixel camera, the Nokia PureView 808.

The new centre will work with Nokia’s existing Tampere and Espoo imaging teams with the company stating that imaging is about to go through a “major evolution.”

Scalado Acquisition

Nokia hasn’t disclosed any financial details of the arrangement, and says information will remain private until Scalado’s technologies are used in a product.

“Nokia has always been a leader in camera phone technology, from its first camera phone, the Nokia 7650 in 2002, to the first autofocus 12-megapixel camera phone with the Nokia N8, to the huge step forward that came with PureView technology, its unique oversampling and lossless zoom,” said Samuli Hanninen, vice president of software programme management. “We’re now at the point where things can change radically. It’s our ambition that phones will be able to capture emotions and distill memories to a far greater extent than they do today.”

The timing of the acquisition is surprising given the company’s current financial state. Last week it revealed huge second quarter losses, with CEO Stephen Elop hinting at restructuring. It is reducing its workforce by 10,000 and will close factories in Germany, Canada and its native Finland.

One good piece of news was that it has sold four million Lumia handsets, however it halved the price of the Lumia 900 recently after it emerged that current Windows Phone devices will not be able to support Windows Phone 8 when it launches.

Nokia’s most recent imaging project, the Nokia 808 PureView Symbian smartphone, boasts a 41 megapixel camera, but none of the major UK operators will be carrying it on its network.

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