According to Beijing time on December 24, Sony is making popular image sensors day and night, but even 24-hour continuous rotation cannot be sold. Terushi Shimizu, head of Sony's semiconductor division, said the company would continue to operate its chip factory for the second consecutive year during the holiday season in an attempt to meet the demand of mobile cameras for sensors.

Now, it's common to have three cameras on the back of the mobile phone. It's an effective way for mobile phone manufacturers to promote customers' upgrading by taking photos as the selling point. Samsung and Huawei's latest models have cameras with more than 40 megapixels, which can capture ultra wide-angle images and are equipped with depth sensors. Apple also joined in the battle this year, launching the iPhone 11 Pro series with three cameras, and many manufacturers even launched or will soon launch four camera phones.

More cameras are not necessarily related to a better camera experience, but they can unlock more functions and versatility, usually a single camera cannot be implemented correctly. It is this versatility that makes OEMs assemble multiple cameras, thus increasing the demand for different image sensors. As a result, Sony's semiconductor division is so hot that it seems they can't keep up with the growing demand.

Mr. Terushi Shimizu, head of SONY's semiconductor division, said: "as far as the current situation is concerned, even if full investment has been made in expanding production capacity, it may still not be enough in terms of the production capacity of camera sensors. &As Bloomberg reports, "& nbsp; we have to apologize to our customers because we didn't do enough & nbsp;".

"Cameras have become the biggest selling point of smartphone brands, and everyone wants their social media pictures and videos to look good," said Masahiro wakasugi, an analyst at Bloomberg. Sony has catered well to this wave of demand. "

Sony is the leading camera sensor provider for most smartphone manufacturers, and most of the devices we use today have at least one sensor made by Sony. Therefore, even though the demand for smart phones has stabilized globally, the demand for image sensors is growing steadily. Sony even keeps producing the image sensors it needs day and night, and keeps running its chip factory during the holiday to meet the demand. However, it is said that even 24-hour operation is not enough. Demand is growing so fast that semiconductor is now Sony's second most profitable business, behind PlayStation.

It is understood that after the profit growth of nearly 60% in the second quarter, the company increased the expected operating revenue of this sector by 38% in October, that is, 200 billion yen by the end of March 2020. Sony expects revenue across its semiconductor division to grow 18% to y1.04 trillion, with image sensors accounting for 86%.

The company has also invested a significant amount of its profits in the business and plans to invest about y700bn (US $6.4bn) over the three-year period to March 2021. Most of the expenditure will be spent on the production of image sensors, and the monthly output capacity will be increased from about 109000 at present to 138000.