8 Megapixel Camera from Sony in iPhone 5

9to5 Mac conducted an interview with Sony CEO  Howard Stringer at Carnegie Hall in New York City as part of the JapanNYC festival. It would appear that Stringer accidentally let slip that Sony will be in fact supplying the camera’s for the iPhone 5.
He said that due to the tsunami in Japan there factory was delayed in providing its shipments of camera sensors to Apple.
This comes as news to us since Sony is not currently known to be a camera supplier for Apple. At the moment OmniVision Technologies is known to be the sole supplier of image sensors for all of Apple’s mobile products so far.

Stringer just said that their camera image sensor facility in Sendai was affected by the tsunami. Getting image sensors to Apple will be delayed.
“Stinger said something to the effect of: Our best senor technology is built in one of the (tsunami) affected factories.  Those go to Apple for their iPhones…or iPads.  Isn’t that something?  They buy our best sensors from us?”

And then the The Street went and confirmed this as well.

Apple has picked Sony’s 8-megapixel camera chip for the 2011 iPhone, according to supply and manufacturing sources, said Rodman Renshaw analyst Ashok Kumar.

That same report also predicted the 5 megapixel camera in the iPhone 4.
So it would seem that an upgraded 8 megapixel camera is certainly on the cards for the next gen iPhone 5. It would make sense as well.