"Webcams are most often used in home and office environments with poor lighting; therefore light- sensitivity performance is paramount," said Todd Koelling, senior director of Notebook, Automotive, and Security Marketing at OmniVision. "Our latest OV7740 sensor delivers the best of both worlds - a smaller profile form factor and nearly double the light sensitivity of our previous generation sensors."

The OV7740 is capable of operating at 60 frames per second (fps) in VGA resolution and 120 fps in QVGA resolution with complete user control over image quality, formatting and output data transfer. It supports a digital video parallel port, and provides full-frame, sub-sampled, windowed or scaled 8-bit/10-bit images in RAW RGB and YUV formats.

The OV7740 is expected to further strengthen the Omnivision's position in the fast-growing notebook PC market. Third-party analyst Techno Systems Research projects the notebook webcam market to exceed $6 billion by 2012, as demand for portable PCs continues to grow*.

In addition to notebooks, the ultra-low light sensitivity of the OV7740 also offers an ideal solution for security, surveillance, automotive, and games and toy applications.

The OV7740 is immediately available for sampling with volume production slated within the first quarter of 2009.

*Source: TSR, 2008 CCD/CMOS Area Image Sensor Market Analysis