Today, with the continuous improvement of 5G technology and the rapid development of smart phone cameras, the sensor industry has a very important market prospect. Currently, Sony is investing further in the field of sensors, especially image sensors.

According to reports, Sony will invest 100 billion yen (about 6.5 billion yuan) in a new semiconductor image sensor factory for smartphone cameras in Nagasaki, Japan, which was first put into operation in 2021.

Image sensors are widely used in digital cameras, photographic equipment, industrial robots, etc., and are called "electronic eyes." Due to the popularity of 5G and automatic driving, and the automation of factories, the demand for image exchange has increased. In this context, the market for image sensors that play a central role is expected to expand.

The report pointed out that Sony's new factory is located adjacent to the existing factory in Qichen City, Nagasaki Prefecture. Covering an area of 74,800 square meters, it is mass-produced "CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) Image Sensor" for smartphones.

It is understood that Sony has four bases in Japan to produce image sensors for smartphone cameras, and the production capacity (converted to 300 mm wafers) is about 100,000 per month. Sony said it will increase production capacity to 130,000 per month by March 2021.

The company has been promoting capacity enhancement and efficiency improvements in existing plants, but as demand expands, capacity will be increased through new plants. Sony's new plant will gradually expand its production capacity from 2021, and eventually reach the scale of tens of thousands of pieces per month.

It is reported that in semiconductors, the structure of image sensors is complex, and the experience of traditional manufacturing is considered to play a role.

At present, Sony has a global market share of 50% in the field of image sensors. In the context of South Korea's Samsung Electronics (20.5%), which is also in the second place, Sony hopes to increase its market share to 60% by 2025, and open Samsung.

On September 17, Sony announced that it had rejected the request of the investor, Daniel Loeb's hedge fund, Third Point, to split the semiconductor business and go public. Sony has positioned semiconductors as the core of future growth, and believes that the product effect with other internal businesses is also obvious.

US survey company IDC data predicts that smartphone shipments in 2019 will be 2% lower than the previous year, only 1.37 billion units, but by 2020 it is expected to increase after four years. With the popularization of 5G smart phones in the future, the demand for images with huge data capacity will increase. The increased demand for autonomous driving and factory robots will drive the expansion of the image sensor market.

The Japanese media previously reported that the impact of the image sensor share trend and market size in 2019 is the trend of China's Huawei, Sony and other suppliers supply sensors to Huawei. Huawei's launch of a rear-mounted 3 camera smartphone has had a huge impact on the image sensor market.