Samsung Narrows Market Share Gap with Sony
Sony, the world’s No. 1 image sensor maker, is joining hands with Qualcomm and TSMC to keep Samsung Electronics, which is expanding its market share, in check.
Sony and Qualcomm are planning to establish a joint camera research lab in San Diego of the United States. San Diego is home to Qualcomm's main office. The two companies plan to develop high-quality cameras based on Qualcomm’s mobile application processor (AP) Snapdragon and Sony’s image sensors. In particular, Sony is planning to focus its efforts on developing image sensors optimized for Snapdragon chips.
Sony forged a production alliance with TSMC, the world’s largest foundry company. Sony and TSMC decided to invest US$500 million and US$7 billion, respectively, in a foundry plant to be built in Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan. TSMC plans to break ground for the plant in 2022 and start mass production in 2024. TSMC’s Japanese plant will mainly produce semiconductors of 22 to 28 nanometers.
Sony intends to hold Samsung in check. According to market research firm Strategy Analysis (SA), Sony accounted for 46 percent of the global image sensor market in 2020, followed by Samsung Electronics with 29 percent. The market share gap between the two companies narrowed significantly from more than 50 percentage points in 2018 to 17 percentage points in 2020.
Samsung Electronics has also partnered with Taiwan’s UMC, the world’s third-largest foundry company, to further narrow the market share gap. Samsung Electronics is producing image sensors at its Hwaseong plant in Gyeonggi Province, but decided to outsource part of the production to UMC as supply failed to meet demand. UMC is building a factory in Nanke, Taiwan, where it plans to mass-produce Samsung image sensors beginning from 2023.
“Demand for image sensors is on the rise not only in the mobile device sector but also in the automobile industry,” an industry insider said. “Competition is expected to heat up between Sony and Samsung down the road.”