Dongbu Announces Volume Production of 2MP Sensors for BYD

Business Wire: Dongbu expands volume production of 2MP image sensors for BYD (China). BYD expects to ship its 2MP devices to major Chinese smart phone manufacturers such as Huawei (world's third largest smartphone maker, and fifth largest mobile phone maker, according to IDC).

"Today’s announcement highlights our foundry capabilities to support fabless Chinese companies meet surging demand in high-growth markets," said Jae Song, Dongbu HiTek EVP of marketing. "Along with meeting BYD’s need for more 2M chips, we are also supporting its development of 5M CIS chips, BYD has successfully introduced 5M CIS, and will soon ramp these devices to volume production. We expect our relationship to blossom further into the development and manufacture of 8M CIS chips." He noted that his company’s foundry relationship with BYD has steadily expanded since becoming its preferred supplier of QVGA/VGA CIS chips for CCTV security applications.

BYD's 2MP sensors are based on 1.75um pixels, while the 5MP product is based on 1.4um pixel.

According to TSR, the worldwide sub-camera market is expected to be dominated by the shipment of 2MP resolution products, which are forecast to grow from about 100M units in 2012 to over 850M units in 2016. By year end, the 2MP shipments into the sub-camera market are expected to be nearly 40% of the total, and surge to reach about 80% of the total by 2016. By another estimate from Gartner, the worldwide shipment of smart phones is forecast to more than double over the next four years (2012-to-2016). Over this same period, Chinese smart phone shipments are expected to rise from 25% to 33% of the total.