TowerJazz Reports Q4 Results

SeekingAlpha: TowerJazz quarterly earning report gives some info on its image sensor business:

"Moving on to the sensors business, which includes both visual CMOS image sensors and non-visual sensors. In 2018, these revenues represented 18% of corporate revenue or approximately $230 million compared with 15% in 2017 or approximately $210 million, with majority of revenues related to industrial, medical, security and high end professional markets.

In 2019, we will begin to harvest from the previous year’s efforts as many of these are customers excellent products ramp into mass production. We provide the most advanced global shutter pixel platform, posting a 2.5 micron pixel size, built on a 65 nanometer platform.

These sensors are geared toward both industrial and commercial markets, covering applications such as machine vision, facial recognition, 3D mapping and augmented and virtual reality. We expect our global shutter platform to drive increased sales volume in 2019 and beyond and with the strong related market growth we see this as a key revenue driver from our industrial sensor customers.

In the medical X-ray market, we are continually gaining momentum working with several market leaders on large panel dental and medical CMOS detectors. These are based on our one-die per wafer sensor technology using our well established higher margins stitching with best in class high dynamic range pixels providing our customers with extreme value creation and high yield both in 200 millimeter and 300 millimeter way for technology.

We presently have strong business with market leadership in this segment and expect substantial growth in 2019 on 200 millimeter and with 300 millimeter single die per wafer initial qualifications that will drive incremental growth over the next multiple years.

In terms of upcoming growth drivers, there is now a major trend in the market, terms time of flight and structured light 3D sensing technologies. Markets driven by these technologies are generally mobile mainly facial recognition, but also front looking 3D mapping, commercial and augmented reality and virtual reality.

We're well-positioned with our unique global shutter pixel technology to address the structured light market and have developed single photon avalanche diode for direct time of flight. In particular we are progressing well on two very exciting opportunities in the augmented and virtual reality markets one for 3D time of flight based sensors and one for silicon based screens for VR head mount displays.

In the neural network field, we have made some substantial progress in partnership with AI Storm, demonstrating the unique building block for full onboard analog AI that can be embedded into our sensors to make smarter sensors."