Apart from being the world’s largest smartphone maker (but not in Q4 2020), Samsung is also one of the largest smartphone component suppliers. One of the popular components supplied by the company is CMOS image sensors. Now, according to a report, the company is planning to expand the production of these sensors by 20% in 2021.

The Elec, a popular and reliable South Korean electronics industry media reports that Samsung Electronics is gearing up to increase the production of CMOS image sensors, which are also known as CIS.

The publication says that Samsung produced about 100,000 wafers per month in 2020. But in 2021, the tech giant has plans to increment the wafers per month count to around 120,000 to 130,000.

In order to achieve this goal, Samsung is said to be considering converting one of its DRAM fabs (11 line and 13 line) at Hwaseong to manufacture CMOS image sensors.

If this happens, it is expected to benefit the four suppliers of Samsung Electronics for CIS, namely Tesna, Nepes Ark, LB Semicon, and Plus Chip.

In anticipation of Samsung’s CIS production expansion, all the above-mentioned suppliers have already been expanding their production capacity. Unsurprisingly, all of them are also expected to make profits from this move.

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Samsung is one of the leading image sensor makers for smartphones, giving tough competition to Sony. The South Korean giant is the world’s second-largest company when it comes to supplying CMOS Image Sensors.

However, because of a serious shortage of image sensors in the market, Samsung has reportedly increased pricing by around 40 percent. And Samsung isn’t the only one to do so as other image sensor providers have also increased the pricing by around 20 percent.

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The report also adds that Samsung has significantly increased UMC’s 28nm ISP foundry orders to meet the demand. However, the company’s production capacity is in short supply at the foundry.

It is being said that the company is planning to invest in machine equipment and hand it over to United Microelectronics Corporation (aka UMC) for production to ensure higher capacity. The report further adds that the deal between these two companies is currently in the discussion phase.

Recently, it was also reported that Samsung is planning to cut down some of the DRAM production capacity as it wants to ensure that CMOS Image Sensor chips are available in the required quantity for the customers.

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Smartphone shipments have been on the rise since the past few years, although it could see a decline this year because of COVID-19. The reason behind the increased demand is the new features and technology that phone makers keep introducing at regular intervals.

Thus, demand for several components has been on the rise since the past few years and it seems that image sensors have seen major growth. A report from Counterpoint Research says that demand for CMOS Image Sensors aka CIS for smartphones has increased about eightfold over the past decade. In the year 2019, it crossed the 4.5 billion units market.

Even though the smartphone shipments are expected to decline this year, the CMOS Image Sensor shipments will probably rise and have an all-time high shipment, hitting almost 5 billion units this year, claims Senior Analyst Ethan Qi.

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This is likely because of the multi-camera setup and 3D sensing sensors for the smartphones that manufacturers have made a norm. Almost all smartphones getting launched these days have a multi-camera set up — the majority of which feature either the triple-camera sensor or quad-camera setup.

Counterpoint’s Component Tracker, each smartphone shipped in the first quarter of this year packed more than 3.5 image sensors on average. It also witnessed around 20 percent growth in the high- to mid-range smartphones’ quad-camera setup.

Given the current market conditions because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, smartphone shipments are expected to decline significantly. In fact, the report predicts a 10 percent year-on-year decline compared to last year.

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(Source)

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The world’s second-largest memory chipmaker, SK Hynix, will be strengthening its CMOS sensor business this year. This means the South Korean giant will join the likes of Sony and Samsung in the smartphone image sensor business in 2020 bringing more than four new CMOS image sensors for smartphones.

SK Hynix has rebranded its CIS (CMOS Image Sensor) business as ‘Black Pearl’. In the first half of 2020, the brand will focus on providing telephoto and wide-angle sensors for smartphones. So Black Pearl will directly take on Sony’s Exmor and Samsung’s ISOCELL image sensor brands. The company has already started shipping three new image sensors to smartphone manufacturers. The fourth image sensor will enter mass production this month.

The company’s recent push into the CMOS image sensor business comes as a result of the increasing demand for camera sensors in smartphones. According to Strategy Analytics, the average number of cameras per smartphone increased from 2.2 in 2017 to 3.9 in 2020.

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Four Black Pearl Sensors in Q1: Two Telephoto & Two Ultra-Wide

SK Hynix will be shipping out four new sensors by the end of Q1 2020, this includes two telephoto sensors and two ultra-wide-angle sensors. All four sensors feature 1.0 µm pixels and 8MP to 20MP in resolution. They are likely aimed at mid-range to upper mid-range smartphones.

Hi-1634 and Hi-2021 are the two ultra-wide-angle camera sensors with 16MP and 20MP resolutions respectively. Both sensors support quad-pixel technology to combine four pixels into one to capture brighter, clearer pictures. The other two sensors are: Hi-847 and Hi-1337 with 8MP and 13MP resolutions respectively. These two are telephoto sensors offering up to 3x optical zoom.

SK Hynix also confirmed it will launch a 0.8um 48MP camera sensor in the second half of 2020.

With another significant player in the market, the image sensor industry will be a lot more interesting in 2020. Unfortunately, we don’t know which brands are going to use the new Black Pearl image sensors. With the sensors already shipping to customers, hopefully, we’ll get more details very soon.

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