The current supplier of camera chips for Apple's iPhone, OmniVision Technologies, says it got a whopper of an order from Apple for 2010. Not only will it supply Apple with 40 to 45 million imaging sensors, they will rate 5 megapixels.Despite the iPhone 3GS' 3.2-megapixel camera, the iPhone still lags the competition when it comes to taking really good pictures. There's no doubt the iPhone 3GS is much improved when compared to the iPhone 3G, but it simply can't compete with the imaging capabilities of some Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson devices.

That's what makes this new report coming out of Taiwan so juicy.

DigiTimes reports that Apple has awarded it with a new contract for 2010. The current contract was to supply Apple with between 20 to 21 million 3.2-megapixel sensors in 2009. For the 2010 iPhone, Apple has doubled the order to 40 to 45 million. That speaks a lot about how successful Apple thinks its device will be next year.

Apple has had a good 2.5 year run with the iPhone. Heck, it was the top-selling phone in the U.S. from January 2009 through October 2009. (It'll probably win the last three months of 2009, as well.) Apple clearly thinks that whatever it cooks up for 2010 is going to be a huge seller. Starting with a 5 megapixel camera certainly won't hurt Apple's chances, but more megapixels don't necessarily make for better images.

[Via Gizmodo]