Sony is dominating the global smartphone image sensor market, commanding over 44 per cent of the A$10 billion pie during the first half of 2022.

This is according to the Strategy Analytics Handset Component Technologies service report, which showed the overall market declined 5 per cent from the first half of 2021, with a 11 per cent year-on-year decline for the June quarter.

Strategy Analytics credits this downturn to bloated inventory and declining smartphone demand.

Sony Semiconductor Solutions captured the top spot with 44 percent revenue share, followed by Samsung System LSI with 30 per cent, and Omnivision, with 17 per cent.

Between them, the top three captured close to 83 per cent of the market’s revenue.

In terms of smartphone multi-camera applications, Image sensors for Depth and Macro applications dropped to 26 percent share while those for Ultrawide application jumped to 20 percent share.

“The market for smartphone image sensors witnessed a slowdown in multicamera adoption owing to declining smartphone demand and inventory within the customer supply chain during the period,” explains Jeffrey Mathews, Senior Analyst at Strategy Analytics.

“Sony drove its share in the market with partnerships with leading smartphone OEMs for large-sized and high-resolution image sensor products.

“Moreover, Samsung continued to lead high-resolution demand by supplying 200MP CIS products to customers and Omnivision saw share loss due to pandemic-induced customer disruptions in China.”

Stephen Entwistle, Vice President of the Strategic Technologies Practice at Strategy Analytics, added: “As demand momentum continues to struggle, OEMs are expected to drive opportunities in positioning smartphones with high-end and premium imaging capabilities.

“The introduction of flagship smartphones featuring high-resolution cameras provides a short-term improvement for the smartphone image sensor market.”