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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