Yole: Chinese CIS manufacturers' revenue increases significantly-EEWORLD

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Mobile device cameras are the main growth contributor to the CIS market until 2019,” asserts Pierre Cambou, Principal Analyst for Imaging at Yole Développement (Yole).

“But in 2020, this is no longer the case. Growth in computing, automotive and security market applications has now surpassed that of mobile devices,” he added.

According to Yole, the $20.7 billion CIS industry is still dominated by mobile and consumer applications, which account for more than 72% of revenues. However, despite the many headwinds in 2020, the computing, automotive, and security sectors have all grown to similar shares, accounting for around 8% of CIS revenues, totaling 23%. But in 2019, this figure was only 21%. In computing, higher demand for laptops and tablets in the context of COVID-19, coupled with the introduction of sensing cameras (such as 3D and fingerprint), reversed a downward trend over the years. In the automotive and security sectors, high demand for cameras comes from the smart car, smart home and smart building trends.

As analyzed by the Yole team in the new 2021 CMOS Image Sensor Industry Status report, some of the future growth in the CIS market will come from these markets, although mobile devices will still play an important role due to their sheer size. Looking more precisely at the growth forecast for mobile devices, social media has completely redefined our relationship with our phones. Therefore, future mobile camera technology will mainly serve social media applications.

According to Yole, mobile phone production will resume its upward trend in 2021, with a year-on-year growth of 11.5%, which is the main factor for Yole's upward revision of CIS forecast. The comprehensive demand for real-time remote communication and expression is rising. Combined with the growth of other markets, the CIS industry should maintain a compound annual growth rate of 7.2% for at least the next five years.

In 2020, a combination of continued high demand for cameras and sanctions on Huawei led to increased CIS purchases for three quarters before a brutal halt in the final quarter of the year.

The COVID-19 pandemic has not played much of a role other than limiting capacity increases.

Pierre Cambou said: "CIS industry output was close to its structural limits throughout the year, especially in the third quarter of 2020. Looking at the full year, the industry's revenue increased by 7.3% year-on-year, in line with Yole's expectations. For CIS players, the performance in 2020 was different from 2019, in fact almost the opposite, with smaller players performing best. Sony did not grow, but Samsung grew by 13%, OmniVision Technologies, Smartsens and SK Hynix grew by about 30%, and Galaxycore grew by 52% year-on-year."

Against the backdrop of US-China trade tensions, the dynamics of Chinese players must be rationalized. CIS is one of the areas of strength for Chinese semiconductors.

Close ties with Taiwanese foundry TSMC and the availability of new capacity from Chinese foundries HLMC and SMIC have been highly profitable. Likewise, Korean vendors and foundries have benefited greatly in this regard.

Semiconductor shortages may still dominate the economic landscape for the next few years. Likewise, the Huawei ban may be the culprit for the herd reaction in stocks we are currently seeing. It will take at least a few years for the current capacity boom bubble to burst. Other semiconductor sectors, such as memory or microprocessors, have experienced this, but the CIS industry has never experienced it, and we must keep this in mind now.

Reference address：Yole: Chinese CIS manufacturers' revenue increases significantly

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