Sony Can't Make Image Sensors Fast Enough To Keep Up With Demand (bloomberg.com) 25
Sony is working around the clock to manufacture its in-demand image sensors, but even a 24-hour operation hasn't been enough. From a report: For the second straight year, the Japanese company will run its chip factories constantly through the holidays to try and keep up with demand for sensors used in mobile phone cameras, according to Terushi Shimizu, the head of Sony's semiconductor unit. The electronics giant is more than doubling its capital spending on the business to 280 billion yen ($2.6 billion) this fiscal year and is also building a new plant in Nagasaki that will come online in April 2021. "Judging by the way things are going, even after all that investment in expanding capacity, it might still not be enough," Shimizu said in an interview at the Tokyo headquarters. "We are having to apologize to customers because we just can't make enough."
Not the only company (Score:4)
Intel cannot meet demand mainly due to yield issues that it doesnt know how to solve. This manifests in two ways, one of which is not enough supply of working chips and the other way is that the ones that do work are too expensive to manufacture to sell at market rates.
I dont know if Sony has yield issues also. In the world of camera sensors a few defective pixels doesnt ruin it, and much like a HDD can remember which sectors are bad, a camera sensor can also remember which pixels are bad and do simple averaging of the surrounding pixels to disguise the problem. They are probably also doing this sort of hide-the-bad-pixels with flat panel displays as well, but its not something they would advertise outside of manufacturing circles (where they might hold patents on the techniques and brag about it)
Re:Not the only company (Score:5)
Not the only company having issuing making enough silicon, although perhaps not all are for the same reasons.
They should read a book on how to run a business.
If you have more demand than supply, there is a simple solution: Raise your prices.
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Raise your prices.
Apple probably doesn't want to pay more. I will guess keeping Apple happy is Sony's number one priority.
The market for image sensors is growing. Rather than raise prices, Sony should expand production and try to increase their market share, offering high end image sensors to more OEMs at prices that allow more lower-cost phones to have an impressive camera.
Sony might want to consider building a fab in the US or Europe or somewhere else outside Japan.
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That only works if you are a sole supplier. But I guess you never made it to chapter 2 in your book.
Re:Not the only company (Score:4, Funny)
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That only works if you are a sole supplier.
Nonsense. If there is more demand than supply, then the other suppliers can't meet the demand either. So if you raise your prices, they can't steal your customers because they don't have enough capacity to supply the customers they already have.
If they have any sense, they will raise their prices as well.
Which policy is more likely to make your customers go elsewhere:
1. We have a supply shortage and are raising prices. You can pay more or you can delay your orders until the supply problem is resolved.
2.
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> 1. We have a supply shortage and are raising prices. You can pay more or you can delay your orders until the supply problem is resolved.
>
> 2. We have a supply shortage, so we are cutting you off. Too bad this is a critical component and you may go bankrupt. Not our problem.
3. We have existing supply contracts for a given quantity at a given price by a given date and our salesmen oversold our production capacity so we're short and facing severe contract penalties even running the plants at 24x7.
No
Re: Not the only company (Score:2)
Iâ(TM)m afraid that business to business contracts donâ(TM)t work that way. Apple in particular signs years-long contracts with up-front payments.
This is why Tim is in charge of Apple. Apple wants the hardest to make parts, they pay large sums of money to get in line first. (Not necessarily highly profitable sums for the manufacturers) Suppliers are obligated to deliver Appleâ(TM)s parts on time first... or on-time delivery bonuses stop. When a company buys 1/2 or 2/3 of your yearly output c
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It doesn't even work if you are the sole supplier, if your main customer has a $245 billion cash reserve.
Apple now has $245 billion cash on hand, up 3% from previous quarter [cnbc.com]
Even worse if your main customer has a $245 billion cash reserve, and it's customer-facing innovation pipeline is mired in the peak-snowflake doldrums.
[*] Apple successfully updated the fifth day of xmas with the pentalobular screw, but th
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I dont know if Sony has yield issues also. In the world of camera sensors a few defective pixels doesnt ruin it, and much like a HDD can remember which sectors are bad, a camera sensor can also remember which pixels are bad and do simple averaging of the surrounding pixels to disguise the problem. They are probably also doing this sort of hide-the-bad-pixels with flat panel displays as well
There's not much a panel can do with dead/stuck pixels since it's the final output that's broken. Trying to compensate the brightness with surrounding pixels would only make it higher contrast and matching hue only makes it bigger and more visible. They can't turn them off either because they're not individually powered except for MicroLED which barely exists as a consumer product. The main improvement comes from pixel size itself, as you move from HD -> 4K -> 8K the effect of one defective pixel is
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They are probably also doing this sort of hide-the-bad-pixels with flat panel displays as well,
I may be mistaken, but I don't think it works that way. You can play these kinds of algorithmic fixes when it's the incoming data being processed, but there's not a whole lot you can do on the output side.
A dead pixel is a dead pixel and no amount of aliasing or blending or fiddling with the image will conceal or mitigate that.
Take aways. (Score:2)
1. Not enough competition in this field. If Sony is the only supplier, then they will get stuck with all the demand. Where is the competition needed to make these sensors. Should Sony sell some patents with competition to keep up with demand.
2. Do all devices need such advanced cameras? We do not have smart phones with a camera feature, we have Smart Cameras with a phone feature. I myself do not take so many pictures, but if I want a High performance Smart Phone, then I need to spend money for the advance
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Samsung is a huge supplier of Smartphone CMOS image sensors.
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Sony has always been considered the best in cameras and sensors (whether it is true or not) for decades. Sony starlight owns the close to night vision market. Their sensors are as good to slightly better than an adjusted human eye at night. Their designs (even 5 years old) are still better than the competition for a similar sized sensor. They have over a dozen available for a wide range of applications. BTW, Minolta and a few specialty makers do make what could be considered real color night vision, bu
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1. There's a lot of competition.
2. It doesn't make sense to try to offer a high end phone for $30 less with a bad camera. Even the guy who doesn't really care about the camera isn't that worried about saving $30 on a $1000 phone.
3. Enjoy your 3G smartphone from 2009? The idea that average people will keep a phone for 10 years is utter nonsense. Technology moves a lot faster than that. And the benefits to humanity from technological improvement are astronomical.
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In order:
1. There’s no *viable* competition. Nobody else builds mobile-sized sensors that are any good.
2. True, though if it were a $200 sensor, it might make a dent in demand.
3. But the pace of improvements is slowing considerably. Just because you can make phones faster doesn’t mean it is necessary to do so. Were it not for Apple dropping support for 32-bit devices, I’d still be happy with my iPhone 5, despite the bad power button. I can’t see myself upgrading my 6s any time
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There's a phone for guys like you: last year's model. Or the previous year's model. They have to keep making new models every year for those to exist though.
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Sony owns half of the image sensor market [eenewsanalog.com]. The "problem" began way back when we were first transitioning from film to digital. All the major film manufacturers (Kodak who actually invented the digital camera, Fuji, along with several major camera manufacturers including Canon, Nikon, Panasonic) along with Sony made forays into manufacturing image sensors.
The key difference was Sony had a
Poor Sony. (Score:2)
Poor Spies. (Score:2)
The surveillance state needs lots of sensors.
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Better photogrammetry for all those 3D printers people bought.