Sony is working on its first 100MP camera sensor, an area it is focusing heavily on as it wards off increased competition from Samsung.
This will mark Sony’s first camera sensor over 100 megapixels, and will be targeted at premium mid-range smartphones.
According to Chinese tipster Digital Chat Station, the sensor will be a part of Sony’s IMX8 series.
Numerous Samsung smartphones already sport a 108MP ISCOELL sensor, and Samsung is already working on a 200MP ISOCELL HP3 sensor, so Sony’s newest sensor might be defunct before it arrives.
“We’re conducting R&D feeling an intense threat”, Terushi Shimizu, the President and CEO of Sony Semiconductor Solutions, said to reporters late last week.
Sony has suffered a fall in sensor market share since sanctions saw it lose lucrative client Huawei. Its global market has fallen from 53 per cent in FY19 to just 43 per cent in FY21.
Samsung, by comparison, now has 18.5 per cent in the market, which is likely to rise as the new iPhone 14 range, which features Samsung camera sensors, arrives.
Sony is targeting a market share of 60 per cent by 2025, by expanding its main image sensor plant in Nagasaki, and focusing the majority of its FY22 budget on semiconductors, with an increase of 35 per cent of spending in this area.
Shimizu gave a presentation earlier this month in which he revealed “we expect that still images from phones will exceed the image quality of single-lens reflex cameras within the next few years”.
