Sony dominating sensors, most innovative chips in iPhone8
Company dominates image sensor market with 49%. Sony’s target for earthquake recovery narrowed to 2 months
The earthquakes that jolted Japan’s southwest island of Kyushu a year ago killed dozens, left tens of thousands homeless and were a reminder of how much the global supply chain for smartphones and digital cameras depends on Sony Corp.
The tremors knocked out production at plants that produce image sensors, the chips that convert light particles into bits and make digital pictures and videos possible. To lead its recovery, the company turned to 33-year veteran engineer Hiromi Suzuki, who crisscrossed the country to secure parts needed to get its Kumamoto factory back online.
A year on from the temblor and Sony is taking sensors into augmented reality, self-driving cars, factory robots and drones as more machines begin using the chips to see the world around them. With control of about half the market, and customers including Apple, Google and Nikon Corp., it’s building on technology pioneered in the 1980s with the Handycam.
“Rather than creating something for humans to look at, image sensors will be used more by machines to take in information,” said Suzuki, 58, the holder of several patents on the technology. “Whether it is Internet of Things, cars or automation in factories, the ability to interpret images is going to be a crucial feature. This will drive growth.”
Suzuki’s team managed to get Kumamoto back up a month ahead of schedule, helping Chief Executive Officer Kazuo Hirai shave $540 million from expected operating losses and, more importantly, allowing Sony to maintain market share. Macquarie Group Ltd. expects sensors to generate 17 percent of operating profit by 2019. “The idea that all of us will be surrounded by image sensors and using them in novel and interesting ways is part of what Sony is trying to build toward,” said Damian Thong, a Macquarie analyst. “They handled the earthquake recovery well, even to the extent of sacrificing their own camera businesses to protect customers.” The Kumamoto plant was hit by hundreds of quakes over three days starting on April 14 last year. The biggest measured 7.3 on the Richter scale, damaging the factory’s core structure, ruining specialized equipment like diffusion furnaces and smashing thousands of wafers sitting in clean rooms.
Suzuki’s team managed to cut the recovery period from four months down to three, but he’s confident it can be shortened to less than two for quakes of similar magnitude. That’s a critical improvement in a country that sits on the densest seismic network in the world, according to the US Geological Survey.