Camera company Nikon is reported to be looking at ways to exploit growth in the smartphone market in order to counter pressure on its compact camera business.

According to Bloomberg, while the company has stopped short of stating that it is working on a smartphone of its own, Makoto Kimura, its president, said that “the number of people taking snapshots is exploding by use of smartphones that sold 750 million or so last year and are still growing. We’ve centralised our ideas around cameras but can change our approach to offer products to that bigger market”.

Of course, this does not necessarily mean that Nikon will look to develop a product of its own: it could provide its own imaging technology to another vendor, for use in a dual-branded imaging-focused device, for example.

But it will find that the smartphone imaging race is already tough: Nokia is expected to launch a Windows Phone device with a 41 megapixel camera this week, Samsung has already launched an Android-powered hybrid digital camera/smartphone, and Sony has also developed advanced Exmor technology for use in its devices.

Bloomberg also said that Nikon has a team working on future products, which wants to “create a product that will change the concept of cameras”, which “could be a non-camera consumer product”.

“Rapid expansion of mobile devices is a change in business environment given to us. Our task going forward is to find an answer to that change,” Kimura said.