Omnivision on Merging with Will Semi, Manufacturing Partners, Pixel Shrink

Yole Developpement publishes an interview with Michael Wu, SVP Global Marketing and Sales at OmniVision. Few interesting quotes:

Update: The quote below has been edited according to Omnivision's request on Oct. 15, 2018:

"Our IPO on the Nasdaq Exchange was in 2000. In 2016, we went private. Since September 2017, Mr. Renrong Yu has been OmniVision CEO and he also serves as Chairman of the Board of Will Semiconductor. While the companies have had a close working relationship, the Will Semiconductor company presently owns a small minority share in OmniVision. A proposed transaction is currently in the due diligence phase, and would still require regulatory approvals. Upon consummation of the proposed transaction, the combined company would then be publicly traded on the Shanghai Stock Exchange."

Once we are at M&A activity, that same Will Semi also buys a majority stake in SuperPix. Together with Omnivision acquisition, it is one of the largest deals registered in Asia-Pacific region in Aug. 2018:

Now, back to the Omnivision's interview:

"With design and R&D centers worldwide, including the U.S., Norway, Japan, China and Singapore, OmniVision has 17 office locations, roughly 1,600 employees and more than 3,800 patents globally. Over the past 23 years, our total shipment number has reached over 9 billion units. In terms of shipment volume, we are leading in all CIS application segments with great customer acceptance and a proven global track record. In terms of unit shipments, we are No. 3 in mobile, No. 2 in automotive and security, and No. 1 in notebooks, medical and emerging markets.

Our first image sensor for the automotive market went to volume production in 2004, and we launched the first automotive high dynamic range (HDR) SoC image sensor/signal processor in 2008. To date, we have more than 110M sensors on the road worldwide. We partnered with TSMC for all of our automotive products to ensure both quality and reliable supply.

HLMC is one of our key supply chain partners. We continue working very closely and developing new products with our partners. Our strategy is to leverage the technical strengths, process capabilities, capacity and long-term commitments of multiple CIS manufacturing partners to optimize our product portfolio, supply, quality and cost, no matter where they are located. We will continue with this strategy moving forward.

We are focused on and committed to the mobile segment—it represents more than 60% of our revenue. Pixel-shrink evolution has accelerated (especially going from 1.0 micron to 0.9 micron and 0.8 micron, and even 0.7 micron) for the mainstream, high-end smartphone segment that is using our 4C CF pattern. This pattern is where four neighboring pixels have the same color filter, effectively increasing sensitivity while providing the option to recover full-size resolution at a specific frame rate."