When you're spending your seasonal dollars/pounds/yen/insert-your-currency-here this year, spare a thought for the poor digital camera manufacturers.

With a gradually declining market share of portable imagery technology, thanks to mobile camera-phones encroaching with fast-increasing sensor size and added features, they’re having to shape up or face a bleak future.  One manufacturer who’s refusing to roll over and die is Samsung; not only do they have a fine range of cellphones, they’re also now trying to take a bite from the other side of the apple with a digital camera that can, through the addition of a USB communication dongle, transfer images via Korean carrier SK Telecom’s cellphone network.

The dongle is, in fact, an HSDPA modem that can also be slotted into laptops, desktops and personal media players to enable high-speed mobile data connection, and should be available January 2007.  It represents the latest in Samsung’s range of convergent digital cameras, which includes the Miniket (shown above) that takes advantage of the large viewfinder display to show DMB television via an integrated receiver.

The Korea Times [via picturephoning]