Leica’s Owner Dreams of a ‘True Leica Phone’

Leica’s latest partnership with Huawei has put Leica camera technology into the Chinese manufacturer’s phones. But it seems that isn’t enough for Leica, whose Chairman is teasing that an actual Leica phone might be somewhere on the horizon.

During an interview with CNBC, Andreas Kaufmann (the owner and chairman of Leica) said that it was a “personal dream” of his to reinvent the smartphone camera.

“Every smartphone is wrong for photography at the moment… the phone nowadays is not fit really for photography… it’s used as a camera, it’s used as a video camera, but it’s not built that way and I think there’s a long way to go still,” he tells CNBC.

Despite offering no clear solutions, he said that he was “not sure whether the company can do [this]…[but] one dream would be my personal dream: a true Leica phone.”

“It gets a bit confidential, but you could think of this: are two camera systems enough for a smartphone? And that could give you a hint into the future.”

We’ve already seen the Light L16, a camera boasting 16 separate cameras. It uses the images from each, blending them into one giant high-resolution image equating to 52-megapixels.

During the original announcement of the Huawei P9, it was said that this was only the beginning of the company’s relationship with Leica. However, if these comments are anything to go by, then it looks like Leica could one day go at it alone in developing a Leica smartphone itself.

(via CNBC via DPReview)

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