We have seen quite a few collaborations between smartphone and digicam producers up to now, so this does not actually come as a shock. In keeping with a reasonably dependable tipster on Weibo, Digital Chat Station, the well-known digicam model Canon is trying to accomplice up with a smartphone maker.
Since we have already got the Oppo/OnePlus-Hasselblad, vivo-Zeiss and Xiaomi-Leica pairs, this leaves Apple, Samsung, Huawei, Asus, Google, Realme, Honor, Sony and Motorola as potential candidates for a Canon partnership. Nevertheless, Apple, Samsung and Google aren’t the kind of firms that may pursue such collaboration, whereas Sony has its personal digicam division, so it is most likely secure to exclude them from the suspect listing.
On condition that DCG is located in China and the rumor most likely comes from there, it may very well be a China-based firm like Realme, Honor or Huawei. Sadly, we do not have something extra to work with and we are able to solely speculate at this level.