Sony recently announced the expansion of the company's semiconductor plant in Nagasaki Prefecture, with plans to expand the area of its newest facility by 60% by 2023 for additional image sensor production.

According to foreign media reports, Sony is accelerating its entry into the automotive industry and is expected to supply image sensor products to 15 of the world's top 20 automakers by 2025.

Terushi Shimizu, head of Sony's imaging and sensing business, said the world's top 20 automakers will produce about 80 percent of the world's cars in the next three years. Sony plans to invest about 900 billion yen (about 46.6 billion yuan) in developing image sensors between 2021 and 2023, an investment that is almost three times the amount invested between 2015 and 2017.

1.Automotive CMOS has a promising future

Sony continues to be bullish on the prospects for image sensors in smartphones as well as in the automotive sector, and the company believes that the market for image sensors for high-end smartphones will grow at an average rate of about 10% per year in 2030. And with the popularity of autonomous driving, the market for sensors for automobiles is also expected to grow significantly, as the sensors are indispensable for detecting obstacles and other aspects.

Sony, a leading image sensor company, officially entered the automotive sector in 2012 and commercialized its application soon thereafter. The company launched a high-performance LiDAR sensor for vehicles at the end of 2021, with supply planned for 2022. This year Sony announced the establishment of Sony Mobility, an electric vehicle company, and released to the public a prototype SUV-type electric vehicle, the Vision S 02, with a total of 40 sensors installed, including 4 A total of 40 sensors, including 4 LIDAR and 18 cameras, were installed, all using Sony's self-developed automotive-grade products.

With the increasing popularity of smart cars and autonomous driving technology, the demand for CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) image sensors in the automotive electronics market is increasing, and the products are installed in large scale in the fields of intelligent car driving record, front view and reverse image, 360° surround view image, and anti-collision system.

In the future, under the trend of car intelligence, more new cars will be equipped with ADAS (Advanced Automatic Driving Assistance System), and manufacturers will import more cameras to obtain video image information for building a diversified car intelligent vision system including driver monitoring system, blind spot detection, pedestrian anti-collision, signal light recognition, etc. The market for automotive CMOS has a broad prospect.

2.Domestic CMOS enterprises actively layout

At present, in the automotive CMOS market, foreign representative enterprises include ON Semiconductor, Sony, etc., mainly in IDM mode, with the advantage of resource integration. Domestic representative companies include Weir Corporation (Howell Technology), Sitwell, Gecko Micro and other chip design companies, are actively laying out the automotive market.

Weir shares mainly through its subsidiary Howell Technology layout CMOS business, currently with many domestic and foreign car companies to establish a cooperative relationship, product coverage from VGA to 8 megapixel range, to meet the product application areas from the traditional back-up radar image, car recorder to electronic rearview mirror, 360-degree panoramic imaging, advanced driver assistance system (ADAS), driver monitoring (DMS), etc. fields.

Stowe has been working on security CMOS for many years, and in recent years has been actively expanding into automotive CMOS, with two products having passed automotive specification certification and starting mass production verification and small volume shipments in several major car manufacturers. In May this year, the company was officially listed on the science and technology board, the prospectus shows that the company intends to increase investment in the research and development of automotive CMOS image sensor chips to form a reserve of process technology capabilities to provide strong support for future business development.

CMOS image sensor and display driver chip research and development, design and sales, CMOS image sensor is mainly used in smart phones and other fields, but the company also actively promote non-cell phone business, in the field of automotive electronics, the company's products are mainly used in the car recorder, back-up camera, 360 around view, rear view and other aspects.