A factory for new image sensors and CMOS has been built by Sony at Nagasaki Technology Sector in Japan.
A new wafer production line has been set up to generate CMOS image sensors by Sony Semiconductor Solutions. The announcement came on April 21, 2021.
It will be located at the same place where the mobile phone’s CMOS image sensors are produced. This will cater to the market demands for Sony sensors which are the best in line for the cameras.
It is an area of 48,000 square meters with 10,000 square meters of dust-free area. 100 billion yen has been invested so far on it and is the first in 13 years where a new plant has been set up for semiconductors and invested upon. It is a global market leader for the same and thus this was much necessary to keep up with growing demands and increase production and business.
Sony accounts for 45.1%, of the market sales whereas 19.9% is for Samsung Electronics as of 2020. However, the growth has been up for Samsung while Sony sales have gone down and this investment was a means to keep behind Samsung by a huge margin.
It will be called “Fab 5,” and will give out the best quality Imaging and Sensing Solutions from Sony. Around 2900 people work in the unit which is being expanded.
The multi-lens in smartphones has increased the demand and also due to the introduction of the 5G smartphone, cars with self-drive features among others. Samsung Electronics had planned to convert a DRAM plant into a CMOS factory in 2021 increasing the production to 20% higher thereby competing with Sony.
“The production of CMOS in the previous quarter (October-December 2020) was 117,000, which was higher than the original estimate of 110,000. We estimate that the output of this season (January-March 2021) will increase to 127,000″, said Yushu Yuki, the CFO of Sony in a meeting in February. Thus it is understandable why such fierce competitive pricing and production increases are happening regularly and this is great news for all tech geeks who will get better lenses for a competitive price.
