Microsoft and HTC target selfie market, new smartphones on the way

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or the last few years, front-facing cameras existed to serve those who had some desire to take self-portraits. “Selfie†wasn’t really a word placed in the Oxford English Dictionary until 2013. Most front-facing cameras were taken for granted in the pre-selfie days, and most front-facing cameras came in the 1MP or 2MP range.

Most front-facing cameras on popular smartphones such as the iPhone 5s, Samsung Galaxy S5, the Sony Xperia Z, Z1, and Z2, as well as the LG G3, don’t come with a mind-blowing megapixel count. And, if you listen to some tech analysts long enough, you’ll believe that megapixels don’t matter.

On the other hand, our back cameras are growing in megapixel count each day, with Sony now producing 21MP cameras (or 20.7MP, to be exact), Samsung producing a 21MP back camera in its Galaxy K and Galaxy S4 Zoom camera smartphones, and Samsung producing a 16MP camera on the Galaxy S5. LG’s only ventured out to 13MPs in its G3, and Sony and Samsung are currently the winners on the Android front in terms of their back camera megapixel counts (the Xperia Z2 and Galaxy S5 tie internationally in image quality).

With HTC’s One M8 success (short-lived at best) and Microsoft’s failure to capture enough of the market to make a dent in the success of iOS and Android, both HTC and Microsoft are looking to carve out a new competitor category: the category of the selfie smartphone.

We’ve to give kudos to HTC for placing a 5MP front-facing camera into the HTC One M8; it’s because of HTC’s decision that Sony decided to create its Xperia C3 with a 5MP front-facing camera. Now, Microsoft looks to join the crowd with a 5MP “selfie†camera smartphone of its own.