Counterpoint: More than 5 Billion CIS for Smartphones Will Be Shipped this Year

Counterpoint Research estimates that the sales volume of CIS for smartphones increased eightfold over the past decade, reaching more than 4.5b units in 2019. Senior Analyst Ethan Qi, notes, “Although the strong growth momentum is expected to soften amid the pandemic fallout, thanks to the irreversible trend towards multi-camera setups and the spreading adoption of 3D sensing systems, the smartphone CIS segment will likely still register high-single-digit shipment growth in 2020, hitting an all-time high of close to 5.0 billion units.”

According to the findings of Counterpoint’s Component Tracker, each smartphone shipped in 1Q20 packed more than 3.5 image sensors on average. The growth is primarily driven by the rising penetration of quad-camera designs in the high- to mid-end smartphones, which jumped to nearly 20% during the period.

Commenting on the importance of camera in smartphones, Research Director, Tom Kang, says, “As camera function has become a key differentiator in smartphones, we expect the quad-camera feature will become a standard moving forward. Leading smartphone brands will continue enriching and enhancing the photography and video capture experiences, as well as exploring AR applications, by leveraging diversified lens and sensor combinations along with the increasing AI computing power.”