Micron, a relatively late entry to the field, has tried to leapfrog toward the front with the technology expertise gained from buying Photobit. Three other major US companies are also in the battle. Agilent Technologies, a Palo Alto, California, spinoff of Hewlett-Packard, learned from the published research on CMOS done at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the 1990s. Its biggest customer is Logitech International, of Fremont, California, which makes PC cameras for Dell Computer and others.
The two other companies, Eastman Kodak and Motorola, started a technology alliance in 1997 that makes and sells CMOS chips. The Kodak-Motorola unit sells chips primarily for industrial uses like machine vision, but also for some Kodak digital still cameras.
Toshiba and Sharp, which have developed their own CMOS manufacturing processes, are believed to have an advantage. If there is a top potential application for the chips, it could be teenagers' swapping of pictures on their cellphones -- already a pastime in Japan.
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