The elec­tron­ics gi­ant is shift­ing its cam­era op­er­a­tions to its wire­less di­vi­sion and is get­ting a lot more dan­ger­ous.Sam­sung's lat­est shake­up will make for a tighter union of smart­phones and cam­eras. That's bad news for every­one else.

The Ko­re­an elec­tron­ics gi­ant, which re­or­gan­iS­es its busi­ness­es an­nu­al­ly, this week told Ko­re­an me­dia out­lets that it plans to fold its cam­era op­er­a­tions in­to its wire­less busi­ness. That will al­low it to "in­te­grate the tech­ni­cal know-how of the two busi­ness di­vi­sions" to dif­fer­en­ti­ate its smart­phones. It al­so will al­low Sam­sung to use in­sight gleaned from its suc­cess­ful phone push to boost its po­si­tion in the cam­era mar­ket.

Sam­sung is al­ready dom­i­nant in the smart­phone busi­ness, but could widen its sub­stan­tial lead even fur­ther by ad­dress­ing a key fea­ture that many con­sumers care about: The qual­i­ty of the cam­era. Ri­vals such as Nokia have made a lot of noise about the cam­era tech found in their phones, and it ap­pears Sam­sung is mov­ing to fol­low suit.

In a crowd­ed smart­phone mar­ket, all com­pa­nies are look­ing for some "wow fac­tor" that makes cus­tomers crave their prod­ucts. For many phone ven­dors, the cam­era has be­come that fac­tor. De­vice mak­ers have in­te­grat­ed im­age sen­sors that can ri­val tra­di­tion­al dig­i­tal cam­eras, and loaded dozens of nifty set­tings that can ed­it and al­ter pho­tos.

Nokia, in par­tic­u­lar, is one com­pa­ny that touts the pho­to-shoot­ing fea­tures of its de­vices. It was one of the first com­pa­nies to start in­cor­po­rat­ing high­er qual­i­ty cam­eras in its mo­bile phones, and it bought a Swedish mo­bile imag­ing com­pa­ny called Scal­a­do last year. Its Lu­mia 1020 smart­phone packs a 41-megapix­el cam­era and soft­ware tweaks that make it "one of the most ar­tis­ti­cal­ly able smart­phone cam­eras we've test­ed," CNET said in its re­view ear­li­er this year.

But smart­phone cam­eras have al­so been a big fo­cus for Sam­sung. The Galaxy S4, un­veiled ear­li­er this year, came with a full suite of cam­era shoot­ing modes, and the com­pa­ny lat­er in­tro­duced a ver­sion of the de­vice, the Galaxy S4 Zoom, that's specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ed at peo­ple who want a phone on par with a point-and-shoot cam­era. Last year, Sam­sung in­tro­duced the Galaxy Cam­era, a dig­i­tal cam­era that has its own cel­lu­lar con­nec­tion.

Sam­sung's po­si­tion in the dig­i­tal cam­era mar­ket–in­clud­ing with the Galaxy Cam­era–isn't as strong as its rank­ing in mo­bile de­vices. The com­pa­ny has in­tro­duced in­no­v­a­tive fea­tures for its cam­eras, but it con­tin­ues to strug­gle. In 2012, the com­pa­ny held 12 per cent mar­ket share of the cam­era mar­ket, putting it in fourth place.

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