Olympus to make camera-phones? Lumixphone coming in February.

If mirrorless is eroding the DSLR market share, camera-phones are eroding the compact camera market. So it comes with no surprise that Olympus will buy the ITX phone corporation:

“TOKYO (Nikkei)–Olympus Corp. (7733) said Friday that it will launch a tender offer for ITX Corp. (2725) to turn the cellular phone sales unit into a wholly owned subsidiary. Olympus currently holds an 82.07% stake in ITX. The cost of acquiring the ITX shares that it does not own will likely come to about 7 billion yen. The tender offer will begin Thursday and end Dec. 27. The offering price is set at 60,500 yen a share, which translates to a roughly 34% premium over ITX stock’s closing price on Friday.”

Just a speculation: Would you like if future PEN cameras would be able to connect (via mobile Internet) to your social network to instantly share pictures? I know Sony and Samsung are working on that and thisould be another reason why Olympus is acquiring the ITX shares.

P.S.: The Panasonic LUMIX Phone will be available next February in Japan (Akihabaranews)