iPhone 5 to sport an 8 MP Sony camera?

As reported by 9to5 Mac, last night Sony's CEO Sir Howard Stringer told Walt Mossberg that a Sony camera image sensor factory in Japan was damaged in the Sendai earthquake. As a result of that damage, Stringer said that getting those image sensors to Apple for the iPhone will be delayed. The interesting thing about this statement is, of course, that Sony doesn't supply any camera sensors to Apple for use in previous or existing iPhones.

Stringer's comments align with a report from The Street back in April 2010 that the iPhone 5 would sport an 8 megapixel camera from Sony. Sony currently makes an 8 megapixel back-lit camera sensor for the Sony Ericsson Xperia arc.

In the image to the right you can see some of the features of the camera sensor found in that phone. The current back-lit 5 megapixel camera and 3.2 megapixel camera found in the iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS respectively are manufactured by OmniVision, which The Street also reported Apple would be parting ways with after the iPhone 4.

[hat tip to The Loop]