Following its 2006 purchase of Konica Minolta, Sony became a strong challenger to Nikon and Canon in professional cameras as it championed mirrorless technology as an alternative to pentaprism-based DSLRs. That hasn't translated to similar success for its Xperia smartphones that command a tiny fraction of the market. In 2013, Sony sought to bring some of its digital camera prowess to a broader smartphone market with the QX10 and QX100, two bulky, mostly autonomous zoom lenses that attached to a smartphone and communicated to it via Wi-Fi even though they had their own on-board storage and battery. These experiments paved the way for the Alice camera now in development.
However, Sony is a mobile market leader when it comes to imaging sensors, supplying modules to customers such as ASUS, OnePlus, Xiaomi, and Samsung, a sensor competitor. (To be fair, Sony also uses Samsung sensors in its phones.) Some smartphone companies play up the Sony brand when touting their cameras, but Sony hasn't pushed its storied name as an ingredient brand like Qualcomm.
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