According to the latest report of market research institute Counterpoint, driven by the growth of demand for smartphones, automobiles, industrial and other applications, the global image sensor (CIS) market revenue will reach $21.9 billion in 2022, an increase of 7% year-on-year, of which the mobile phone CIS market will contribute 71.4% of revenue, and the total revenue ratio of the top three CIS suppliers Sony, Samsung and Howey will reach 77%.
Image source: Counterpoint Research
Ethan Qi, deputy director of research at Counterpoint, said that as global smartphone shipments continue to pick up and image sensors are further upgraded, especially in terms of resolution, CIS sales in the mobile phone space are expected to achieve mid-single-digit year-on-year growth. At the same time, with the intelligentization, networking and automation of vehicles, the application of vision and sensing cameras for ADAS and ADS functions will proliferate, thus driving the increase in CIS penetration in new vehicles in the next few years. In addition, the security surveillance sector is expected to maintain low single-digit growth.
Sony expects revenue to reach 39.1% this year to continue to lead the industry, followed by Samsung (24.9%) and Howey Technology (12.9%).
As the largest supplier of image and ToF sensors, Sony has been actively expanding and diversifying its CIS customer base. Both of these products continue to shift to large pixels and are driven by the trend from mobile photography to professional DSLR camera quality, and the company's CIS revenue is expected to increase 3% year-on-year this year.
At the same time, benefiting from the first-mover advantage of providing cost-competitive ultra-high-resolution CIS for mid-to-high-end smartphones, as well as an active capacity expansion strategy, the gap between Samsung and Sony is expected to further narrow.
Thanks to its diverse product portfolio, breakthroughs in ultra-high-resolution sensors for smartphones, and growing demand in the automotive, surveillance and industrial sectors, Howey expects CIS revenue to grow significantly in 2022.
Although macroeconomic uncertainties and the repeated impact of the epidemic still pose a threat to the global CIS industry, camera performance upgrades and application diversification of smartphones, automobiles and other applications are setting a solid long-term growth tone for CIS. (Proofreading/Mike)