Stronger Together
Yoshida Kenichiro, chairman of Sony, recently visited Samsung Electronics in strict secrecy in return for a visit to Japan by Samsung Electronics President Kyung Kye-hyun (head of the DS Division) last year. Samsung Electronics, which has expressed its will to actively target the automotive memory semiconductor market, has begun to have a discussion about cooperating with Sony, which has been aggressive in the mobility business, analysts say.
According to industry sources on March 6, Chairman Yoshida will visit Samsung Electronics’ Pyeongtaek Campus in Gyeonggi Province and meet President Kyung. This meeting is interpreted as a response to Kyung’s visit to Sony’s headquarters during his three-day visit to Japan in November 2022. At the time, Kyung explained Samsung Electronics’ technological prowess and discussed strengthening cooperation with Sony.
In addition, during his business trip to Japan, Kyung posted a photo on his social media account of a car he took while visiting Sony Headquarters. “A Sony Walkman was a dream of young people in the early 1980s,” Kyung said. “Now, Sony is developing a self-driving car with Honda. It’s a change at Sony.”
Samsung Electronics supplies memory semiconductors to Sony, and Samsung Display supplies TV panels to Sony too. Moreover, the Korean tech giant is seeking to seize opportunities related to memory semiconductors for vehicles by paying much attention to the fact that Sony is recently working on self-driving vehicles.
At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) held in early 2022, Sony unveiled the Vision-S, an electric concept car. As Sony recently collaborated with Honda to establish Sony Honda Mobility (SHM) and aggressively entered the mobility business with electric cars, drones and taxi apps, analysts say that the two companies have reached a certain level of cooperation regarding semiconductors for self-driving cars.
In addition, at the Sony Global Press Conference held at the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) earlier this year, Sony took the wraps off the Afeela, the first electric vehicle made in collaboration with Honda, presenting its goal of making it a moving entertainment platform. Sony has a strong desire to provide a subscription service that allows users to enjoy movies and video games on electric cars.
Sony Honda Mobility will receive pre-orders for the Afeela beginning from the first half of 2025, and will release this model in the North American market in the spring of 2026. In order to strengthen the model’s autonomous driving capabilities, Sony plans to increase object detection capabilities by embedding 45 sensors such as cameras and radar on the Afeela. Cooperation with Samsung Electronics is urgently needed in this process.
Also, if Samsung Electronics cooperates with Sony, the Korean chipmaker is expected to easily attain its goal of becoming the No. 1 player in the automotive memory market by 2025. “We are planning to claim the No. 1 position in the automotive memory market by 2025,” a Samsung Electronics official said at Samsung Tech Day 2022 held in Silicon Valley in the United States in October 2022. “We will continue to expand new customers in the field of self-driving vehicles.”
With Samsung Electronics taking the initiative, Harman, Samsung Electro-Mechanics, and Samsung SDI are also pumping up their efforts in strengthening the automotive electronics domain. In particular, Samsung Electro-Mechanics is expanding the proportion of automotive electronic products in the fields of semiconductor substrates, camera modules, and multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs) by launching organizations dedicated to automotive electronics in major business units. In 2022, Samsung Global Research, a group think tank, set up a new team focusing on the automotive electronics business.
Market research firm Omdia forecasts that sales in the market for automotive semiconductors will grow from US$76.027 billion (approximately 100.2 trillion won) in 2023 to US$129.835 billion (approximately 171.12 trillion won) in 2028.