Sony announced on December 27, 2010 that it plans to invest approximately 1 in 2011 (April 2011 - March 2012) in order to meet the growing demand for CMOS image sensors for use with smartphones and digital cameras. The Y100 million Yen expansion of CMOS image sensor production capacity aims to double the combined monthly production capacity of CCD and CMOS sensors to approximately 50,000 pieces by the end of March 2012.
Sony’s competitor CMOS image sensor maker OmniVision Technologies announced earlier this month that its revenue forecast for August-October will reach 255 million-2.75 compared to Sony’s plan to double the image sensor revenue. Billion U.S. dollars (middle value of 265 million U.S. dollars, equivalent to a quarterly decrease of 4%), and the industry’s earnings per share of 0.52 to 0.64 U.S. dollars (median value of 0.58 U.S. dollars), were all lower than the analyst’s original forecast of 306.2 million U.S. dollars and 0.80 U.S. dollars.
Needham & Co. Analyst Rajvindra Gill believes that the reason for the poor financial performance of OmniVision is that it is most likely that the iPhone 5’s 50% image sensor component orders were divided by Sony. Nearly three-quarters of OmniVision’s revenue comes from the mobile phone market. Customers include Apple, HTC (2498) and Motorola. Barrons. In April of this year, comb pointed out that the close cooperation with TSMC (2330) has made OmniVision better than Sony in terms of both manufacturing cost and image sensors.
Bloomberg reported that Sony, a spokeswoman for the global image sensor leader Fu Renren, said in a telephone interview on the evening of the 30th that because the demand for promising image sensors will continue to be strong, the company plans to have an image in the medium term. Compared with the previous fiscal year (2010), the revenue of the device has doubled to a level of 5,000-600 million yen. Rich Zhang Ren did not explicitly increase the revenue but did have a timetable. Sony's annual image sensor revenue was 250 billion yen, and this year's (2011) annual forecast is expected to grow to 310 billion yen (up 24% year-on-year).