Yole CIS Market Report: Smaller Companies Expand Market Share

Yole Developpement publishes an update of its "Status of CMOS Image Sensor Industry 2021 report."  Pierre Cambou, Principal Analyst, reports interesting observations:

"For CIS players, 2020 did not play out similarly to 2019, in fact it was almost the opposite, with the smaller players doing best. Sony didn’t grow, but Samsung grew 13%, OmniVision, Smartsens and SK Hynix grew about 30%, while Galaxycore grew 52% YoY.

The CIS industry output stayed close to its structural limit all through the year, and especially in Q3-2020. For the full year, the whole industry grew by 7.3% YoY in revenue, in line with Yole’s expectation.

Until 2019 mobile device cameras were the main growth contributor to the CIS market. But in 2020 this is no longer the case. Computing, automotive and security market applications have now outpaced the growth of mobile device."

The US$20.7 billion CIS industry is still heavily dominated by mobile and consumer applications, representing more than 72% of revenues. Yet, despite all headwinds in 2020, computing, automotive and security have each grown to similar shares, reaching about 8% of CIS revenues, and 23% combined. They had represented 21% in 2019.