Last month’s earthquake and tsunami in Japan has impacted production of metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) image sensors at two facilities, affecting the supply of these parts to the cellphone market, IHS iSuppli said last week.
Toshiba Corp’s Iwate Image Sensor fab, which produces logic chips and CMOS image sensors for mobile phone cameras, was shut down. Likewise, delivery was delayed from Sony Corp’s CMOS image sensors to cellphone original equipment manufacturers, the report said.
Toshiba last year was the world’s fifth-largest supplier of handset image sensors, with an 11.8 percent share of global -revenue, -according to a preliminary IHS iSuppli estimate.
Sony ranked No. 6 with a 7.3 percent share. Together, the companies accounted for 19.2 percent of global handset digital camera image sensor revenues last year.
“With its low cost and easy integration with other electronics, CMOS has long been the technology of choice for cellphone cameras,” said Pamela Tufegdzic, an analyst for consumer electronics at IHS iSuppli. “The Japan earthquake and subsequent logistical challenges have disrupted a portion of the supply of this key component.”
However, Taiwan’s HTC Corp (宏達電), the world’s No. 5 smartphone maker, isn’t expected to be included in the list of worst-hit firms.
“Large-scale industry leaders should be those prioritized by their suppliers. We believe HTC will be able to gain share during this cycle [of the supply squeeze after the quake],” Macquarie Equities Research said in a note last week.
Smaller brands won’t be that lucky, however, as Macquarie said there have been several product delays or shortages for Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Arc and Play models, as well as Lenovo Group’s (聯想) LePhone.
While CMOS sensor production and distribution has been impacted, supplies of the major alternative image-sensor technology — CCDs — appear to be unaffected, the US-based research house said.
Taiwan-based digital camera makers Altek Corp (華晶科) and Ability Enterprise Co (佳能企業), which contract-manufacture products for major Japanese brand names, said they were not experiencing any shortages in near-term CCD supply from Japan, the report said.
Ability now sources about 90 percent of its CCD components from Sony, while Altek buys between 70 percent and 80 percent of those parts from Sharp.
Sharp’s CCD plants in Japan are far from the disaster zone, while Sony’s CCD plants are located in Thailand.
Because of their higher image quality, CCDs are commonly employed in digital still cameras. In contrast, CMOS sensors are predominately used in cellphones and often in other devices where the camera is secondary to other functions.
“Over the long-term, however, CCD makers could experience challenges with their own upstream material suppliers and encounter problems with transportation and power [in the face of the quake],” the report said.
Given the impact of the quake, Japanese-based digital camera brands Panasonic, Canon and Nikon have had to close down some of their high-end -production lines for digital still cameras in Japan.
However, because the lower-end consumer models of those companies are primarily manufactured at plants in China and Thailand, or outsourced to Taiwan-based makers, the earthquake is not expected to have a significant impact on those segments, IHS iSuppli said.
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