Nearly a year ago, we reported that Sony was rumored to provide an 8-megapixel camera/sensor combination for Apple’s iPhone 5 which is slated to appear sometime, later this year. Last month again, we heard further news that Sony would be the sole provider of the iPhone camera, seeing how Apple’s current provider, Ominivision had indicated that it could not meet the kind of supply that Apple needed. Now, the Wall Street Journal reports that during an interview with Walt Mossberg, Sony’s President and CEO, Sir Howard Stringer mentioned supplying Apple with a camera for their next product.

 Early on, he raised the irony of Sony supplying camera components for Apple devices. It “always puzzles me,” he said. “Why would I make Apple the best camera?” 

As the WSJ, there isn’t much more news to go off here so it’s hard to pinpoint which device he might be referring to, though we can confirm that Sony currently does not supply any camera sensors to Apple which makes this fall inline with our previous, iPhone 5 rumors. Still, outside of irony, I hope that Mr. Stringer sees beyond the irony of the situation and realizes that somebody does not choose between say an iPhone 4 or the up coming Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc, based on their camera features alone. I adamantly believe that one of the reasons why Samsung has been able to so successfully fight off Sony, beating them in the number of commercials they run and products they release is due the fact that Samsung has many supply based deals. Samsung is currently a top flash and ram provider for many other tech companies, including Apple. With deals that are worth billions of dollars in many cases, it’s in Samsung’s best interest to supply these companies with the parts they need as they can then turn around and invest that money in their own product offering, even if those products compete with Samsungs own offerings.

[Via WSJ]