On December 26, it was reported by Bloomberg that for the second year in a row, Sony produced image sensors day and night during holidays to meet customers' demand for such parts. Although Sony keeps the factory running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, it still cannot meet the market demand.
It should be noted that the holidays referred to by Bloomberg should be all the holidays in Japan this year, not Christmas in particular, because Christmas is not a legal holiday in Japan, and generally it is not a holiday.
The image sensor here refers to the camera sensor/CMOS, specifically the sensor inside the mobile phone camera. Despite the sluggish growth of the global smartphone market, the number of cameras on the back of mobile phones continues to grow. The flagship phones usually use three, four or even five rear cameras, so the demand of mobile phone manufacturers for Sony image sensors has increased significantly.
A new Sony factory is being built in Nagasaki, Japan, but it will not be mass produced until April 2021. Sony's capital expenditure on this part of business will double this year to 2.6 billion dollars.
Terushi Shimizu, head of Sony Semiconductor, said: "From the current situation, even if we have made so much investment in expanding production capacity, it may not be enough. We have to apologize to customers because we have not done enough."
Earlier this year, Sony said that its image sensor revenue accounted for 51% of the entire market. By 2025, Sony hopes to increase this proportion to 60%, and this year, Sony will be able to increase its market share by several percentage points.
Sony expects that the demand of mobile phone manufacturers for ToF sensors will increase significantly next year, especially Apple will add ToF sensors to iPhone models in 2020.
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