Despite having to have its plants running 24/7, japanese tech giant Sony is still struggling to meet demands for its widely used smartphone image sensors. According to a report by Bloomberg, this marks as the second year straight that the company’s plants are in operation during holidays.
Sony controls over 50 percent of the smartphone image sensor market and supplies them to various smartphone makers including Redmi and Apple. In an attempt to cope with demands, the company has invested into increasing its production capacity by building a new factory in Nagasaki that is scheduled to open in April 2021.
Terushi Shimizu, head of Sony Semiconductor Solutions Group, told Bloomberg that the increased capacity is unlikely to change the situation and might not still be enough to meet the demands of its image sensor production. “We’re having to apologise to customers because we just can’t make enough,” he said in the report.
Nevertheless, things will be challenging for Sony in 2020 with the introduction of its new 64MP IMX686 image sensor to the smartphone market, as well as production of the cameras on current Apple iPhone smartphones. On the other hand, the company is also looking to a new generation of sensors that can see the world in three dimensions via Time of Flight methods.
