The car-mounted cameras debuted in the form of monitoring cameras for providing back-view and side-view, and later front-view as well. In addition to the use as a monitoring camera, the front monitoring camera was soon used as a sensor for keeping distance from another vehicle in front and staying inside the lanes. The number of car-mounted cameras topped approximately 10 million units in 2011 and their market is said to be worth around 35 billion yen.

 Efforts for technical development toward functional improvement and cost reduction of car-mounted cameras are expected to increase in line with such movements as legal requirement of back-view cameras on passenger vehicles in North America, similar requirements of lane departure preventive systems and collision preventive braking systems in the United States and Europe, and their addition to the new vehicle assessment list. Backed by the users' new awareness resulting from the functional improvement of camera-based systems, the number of car-mounted cameras is expected to increase sharply to 40 million in 2015 and to more than 50 million in 2020.

 The auto industry sees the car-mounted camera feature as one of their car's appealing and differentiating performances and is likely to engage in fierce competition in developing camera-based systems.

 To gain insights into the industry's trend, MarkLines interviewed development staff of Fuji Heavy Industries making news with the unique EyeSight feature that uses a stereo-camera, and the representative of the Japanese corporation of Mobileye that is providing mono-camera based recognition technology for OEMs. Details of these interviews are introduced in this report under separate sections about the trends among OEMs and suppliers.