Omdia: Samsung CMOS image sensor prices increased by 40%
Latest update time：2021-09-01 18:05
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According to a report by Omdia cited by IFnews, 5-megapixel and 8-megapixel CIS used in mid- and low-end mobile phones are now facing a serious shortage. Because of this, Samsung has increased the price of its CIS by 40% since December 2020, and other CIS suppliers have also increased their prices by about 20%.
At the same time, Omdia also provides the capacity release charts of these CIS suppliers.
At the same time, they also made a prediction on the demand for mobile phone cameras.
Samsung is the world's second largest CIS image sensor supplier. According to reports, in order to expand CMOS image sensor (CIS) shipments, Samsung has placed a large number of 28nm ISP wafer foundry orders with UMC in the first half of the year. As the wafer foundry's production capacity is in short supply, the equipment industry has heard that Samsung intends to invest in machinery and equipment and hand it over to UMC for production to ensure production capacity. As for the details of the cooperation, the two parties are actively discussing and negotiating.
Earlier, there were reports that Samsung planned to reduce some of its DRAM production capacity to ensure that CIS chips, which are in short supply worldwide, could meet the needs of these customers.
Huawei's mobile phone business is hindered, Samsung takes advantage of the opportunity to grab Sony's image sensor market
According to an earlier report by Nikkei Asian Review, the Huawei ban has led to changes in the market competition landscape, and Samsung Electronics is now challenging SONY's global market share in image sensors for smartphones.
SONY is a high-end image sensor supplier in the market. It is technologically ahead of its competitors and is favored by Apple and Huawei. However, the Huawei ban may lead to a shakeup in the market structure.
Due to its late entry into the market, Samsung's business volume with major manufacturers such as Apple and Huawei is limited, but it has attracted more smaller customers, such as Xiaomi and vivo. These mobile phone manufacturers are expected to benefit from the Huawei ban, and Samsung, as a supplier, is also likely to benefit from it.
According to data from British research firm Omdia, Sony's global market share of CMOS image sensors reached 53.5% in 2019, compared to Samsung's 18.1%. In the past, Sony adopted a strategy of giving priority to Huawei and large smartphone brands, but this strategy has instead impacted Sony amid the US-China trade war.
A related equipment supplier said: "SONY is taking a cautious stance, but Samsung is investing aggressively, as if now is their opportunity." He said that the strategies adopted by SONY and Samsung are completely opposite. In August and September, the supplier received several large orders, all from Samsung.
Although SONY has obtained supply permission from the US government, SONY remains cautious about the future of its business with Huawei. A source close to SONY said that the reason is that Huawei still needs to consolidate the supply of other chips and parts in its smartphone business, and it is still unclear whether the scale of business between SONY and Huawei can return to the level before the ban.
Previous reports have pointed out that several manufacturers including AMD, Intel, SONY, and Samsung have obtained supply licenses. Earlier, Qualcomm also confirmed that it had obtained a license to supply 4G mobile phone chips to Huawei.
Although Sony's top management said they would diversify their customers to cope with competition from Samsung, analysts pointed out that it is not easy for Sony to completely make up for the reduction in Huawei's business. The report said that Samsung's competitive advantage comes from its role as an integrated electronics manufacturer, with businesses ranging from memory chips to manufacturing. In contrast, Sony only focuses on image sensors in its chip business.
Smartphone CIS shipments to exceed 5 billion, growing eightfold in 10 years
According to market analysis firm Counterpoint Research, the public health incident has had a significant impact on the global smartphone industry. The market expects that mobile phone shipments will return to the 2014 level, slightly exceeding 1.3 billion, a year-on-year decrease of about 10%.
However, as a beneficiary of continuous improvements in technology and feature sets, sales of CMOS image sensors (CIS) for smartphone applications have increased eightfold over the past decade to reach 4.5 billion units in 2019.
Commenting on the trend, senior analyst Ethan Qi noted: “Although the strong growth momentum is expected to weaken amid the impact of the pandemic, smartphone CIS shipments will remain strong in 2020, with shipments still growing in the high single digits to hit a record high of nearly 5 billion, due to the irreversible trend towards multi-camera setups and 3D sensing systems.”
Figure 1: The smartphone industry continues its trend toward multi-camera systems
According to Counterpoint’s Component Tracker, each smartphone shipped in the first quarter of 2020 contained an average of more than 3.5 image sensors. The growth was mainly due to the rising popularity of quad-camera designs in mid- to high-end smartphones, which jumped to nearly 20% of devices during the period.
Chinese smartphone brands OPPO, Xiaomi (01810), Huawei and South Korea's Samsung are at the forefront of adopting quad-camera setups, with quad- and penta-camera-based smartphone shipments accounting for a combined 83% in the first quarter of 2020.
Judging from the brand-level quad-camera and above settings, the fast-growing young brand Realme is the most radical brand to follow this trend. In the first quarter, nearly two-thirds of its smartphone sales adopted a quad-camera system. The next brand to cram more camera sensors into the rear camera module is OPPO, accounting for more than half of its smartphone shipments in the first quarter of 2020. Xiaomi's trend is higher than the market average, while Samsung and Huawei are still selling a large number of low-end models, and less than one-third of their smartphone shipments of quad-camera systems in this quarter.
Talking about the importance of cameras in smartphones, Research Director Tom Kang stressed, "As camera capabilities have become a key differentiator for smartphones, we expect quad-camera capabilities to become the standard moving forward. Leading smartphone brands will continue to enrich and enhance the photography and video shooting experience, as well as explore AR applications, by leveraging diverse lens and sensor combinations and increasing AI computing power."
At the same time, new technologies will continue to emerge to ease cost pressures. For example, Immervision, a Canadian company specializing in wide-angle optics and image processing algorithms, is developing an innovative wide-angle design that shares a high-megapixel main camera to enable panoramic capabilities.
In the global CIS manufacturer revenue ranking, Sony (SNE.US) leads the way with nearly half of the market share
The global mobile phone market shrank in 2019, prompting various mobile phone brands to launch various functions such as portrait, night shooting and zoom capabilities to stimulate sales. It is expected that the global CIS market will continue to grow in 2020. According to TechnoSystem Research survey data, the annual output value of CMOS image sensors in 2019 was US$15.9 billion, an increase of 18% over 2018, and the sales volume was 6.2 billion, an annual increase of 15%.
Although the demand for smartphones may show negative growth in 2020 due to external factors and market saturation, the trend of dual-lens/triple-lens smartphones continues to grow, and the number of CIS installed in smartphones will increase, which can support the continued growth of the CIS industry.
In terms of supplier market share distribution, Sony and Samsung are still the world's major CIS component suppliers, and the two companies together account for nearly 70% of the market share.
First, let's look at Sony. According to the overall performance figures for the third quarter of fiscal year 2019 (October 1, 2019 - December 31, 2019) released in February, the Imaging and Sensing Solutions Business (I&SSS): sales revenue increased by 29% year-on-year to 298 billion yen, and operating profit increased by 28.7 billion yen year-on-year to 75.2 billion yen. The reason is that the sales of image sensors for mobile products have achieved significant growth, offsetting the increased depreciation, amortization expenses and R&D expenses as well as the negative exchange rate impact. The full-year operating profit forecast for the business was raised from 200 billion yen to 230 billion yen.
However, as Nikkei said, in the field of image sensors, South Korea's Samsung Electronics is catching up in terms of performance and quantity. In the field of industrial sensors, where Sony is weak, ON Semiconductor (ON.US) and others will promote development. Each manufacturer believes that demand will expand due to the popularization of the "Internet of Things (IoT)" and other reasons, and is competing for it.
Nikkei further pointed out that Samsung, which ranks second in the world, is catching up with Sony in the field of image sensors for smartphones. Recently, Samsung launched a 108-megapixel ultra-high-definition sensor, surpassing Sony. This sensor will be used in high-end mobile phones. Samsung's strategy is to take market share from Sony, centered on Chinese smartphone companies. In the medium and long term, industrial image sensors are expected to achieve growth.
But Sony will not sit still. With Kenichiro Yoshida becoming Sony's CEO in 2018, he invested heavily in the image sensor department and no longer emphasized traditional business. Previously, Sony announced that it would build a new factory for semiconductor image sensors for smartphone cameras in Nagasaki, Japan. Sony will invest 100 billion yen (about 920 million US dollars) and put it into operation as early as 2021. The company also regards automotive sensors, including sensors for autonomous driving, as the company's new goal for future development.
In order to catch up with Samsung, in addition to launching high-pixel sensors as mentioned above, Samsung also hopes to further consolidate its position by cooperating with mobile phone manufacturers. Tetsuo Omori, a senior analyst at the research company Techno Systems Research (Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo), pointed out that "Samsung hopes to seize market share from Sony by supplying high-end products to China."
According to a report by Korean media KoreaBusiness, Samsung Electronics is currently adopting two strategies in the image sensor market, including adopting more advanced process technology and more competitive pricing strategies to challenge the market leader SONY. The report pointed out that Samsung, which is currently actively developing image sensors, is promoting its own mobile image sensors to major smartphone manufacturers. In particular, its former competitor, LG Electronics, has recently adopted Samsung's image sensors in its smartphone products.
In fact, the two companies are currently engaged in a war of words over the image quality of 8K TVs, and the dispute has even developed into a lawsuit. However, this does not affect the decision of Samsung's 32-megapixel image sensor to be installed in the front camera lens of LG's smartphone V50S SynQ.
In addition, the report also pointed out that Samsung's system business department has determined that LG will become one of its long-term stable customers, so as to further improve the sales and market share of image sensors. In addition, major smartphone manufacturers including Xiaomi and OPPO in China have also begun to use Samsung's image sensor devices for their latest products. Therefore, Samsung's market share in the image sensor market is expected to continue.
In addition, the recent installation of high-performance camera systems with multiple lenses in smartphones, coupled with the extensive use of camera lenses in assistive systems for self-driving cars, has accelerated the growth of the image sensor market.
Samsung is working hard to improve performance competitiveness while focusing on new technology development.
Samsung started mass production of the industry's first 18-megapixel image sensor in August, and the industry's first 0.7-micron ultra-compact action image sensor developed in September 2018 has been mass-produced in 2019. With these advantages, Samsung hopes to further challenge Sony's leading position.
Although Sony and Samsung are leading in the entire sensor field, this is mainly due to their leading position in consumer electronics, especially smartphones. However, in terms of automotive grade sensors pursued by major manufacturers, the US manufacturer On Semi is the leader.
According to data, ON Semiconductor, which ranks fourth in overall revenue, has performed well in the automotive camera market. Statistics show that their market share in the automotive CIS market is as high as 40%. According to the company's announcement in October last year, they shipped more than 100 million AR0132AT image sensors for assisted driving, reaching a milestone in quantity. OmniVision, which ranks third, also has a market share of more than 20% in automotive CIS. The third and fourth largest companies in the market have performed well in the automotive market. However, both Sony and Samsung are currently working hard on automotive sensors, and their investment may pose a threat to ON Semiconductor and OmniVision.
In addition, SK Hynix is also worth noting in this list.
In view of the increase in market demand, SK Hynix established the CIS Japan Research and Development Center (JRC) in Japan on September 1 last year to develop the next-generation CMOS image sensor technology.
Masayuki Shimura, director of CIS Japan Research Institute, predicted: "Smartphone cameras will further develop in the future, with not only viewing applications but also sensing applications, and will be applicable to mid- and low-end smartphones in addition to high-end phones." He also said: "For example, 3D cameras that recognize the structure of 3D objects, with the application of new image sensors and systems, the requirements for big data processing will increase. Once image sensors can play the role of edge devices, they are expected to create more solutions and business opportunities in the upcoming 5G era."
Shimura, director of the research institute, pointed out: “The establishment of SK hynix’s CIS research institute in Japan will help the company make full use of the various CMOS image sensor resources gathered in Japan. In particular, the research and development work jointly promoted with Japanese universities will contribute to SK hynix’s promotion of the CMOS image sensor business.”
SK Hynix said that in order to cope with the competition of achieving higher resolution with smaller module size, SK Hynix's "Black Pearl" series has launched four new 1.0μm (micrometer) image sensor products, which reduce the pixel size from the original 1.12μm to 1.0μm. These products have the "Quad Pixel" function to adjust the size of the pixel area and adopt the Quad to Bayer (Q2B) Re-mosaic algorithm. With these functions, the new "Black Pearl" products are not only compatible with various types of cameras, but also can improve the shooting quality in dark environments.
In the new series, Hi-1634 (16 million pixels) and Hi-2021 (20 million pixels) are products optimized for ultra-wide-angle cameras in smartphone rear cameras. In January this year, SK Hynix began mass production of these two products and is currently supplying them to customers. Due to the smaller pixel size, the Hi-1634 and Hi-2021 sensors are able to accommodate more pixels in the same space.
SK Hynix also stated that after launching the 1.0μm "Black Pearl" series in the first quarter of this year, SK Hynix also plans to launch 0.8μm (48 million pixels) products in the second half of the year. The company's goal is to ensure competitiveness in the CIS (CMOS Image Sensor, CIS) business field and consolidate its position in the market.
In addition, a large number of emerging manufacturers have entered the market in China. I believe that the CIS market will be extremely exciting in the next few years.
*Disclaimer: This article is originally written by the author. The content of the article is the author's personal opinion. Semiconductor Industry Observer reprints it only to convey a different point of view. It does not mean that Semiconductor Industry Observer agrees or supports this point of view. If you have any objections, please contact Semiconductor Industry Observer.
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