The HP market has slumped for 2022, which should impact the business of all the companies involved, including Sony which supplies camera sensors to many HP manufacturers.
However, from Sony's financial reports, their income can actually grow. This is one of them thanks to Apple's steps to upgrade the camera line of the iPhone 14.
For example, the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max, whose main camera has upgraded to 48MP and a 12MP ultrawide camera. The selfie camera on all iPhone 14 models is now updated with autofocus.
This iPhone 14 camera upgrade is a breath of fresh air for Sony, because Apple exclusively uses Sony sensors in all iPhone 14 variants, even for its 3D sensing sensors, we were quoted as saying from GSM Arena, Wednesday (18/1/2023).
On average, Sony gets an increase in revenue of USD 6 for each camera unit used, with a total value of USD 300 million in mid-2022.
Even in December 2022, Apple CEO Tim Cook admitted that Apple had been working with Sony to work on camera sensors since a decade ago. Cook said this after visiting the Sony factory in Kumamoto, Japan, accompanied by Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida.
But it's not just Sony whose camera sensor business is thriving. Samsung LSI is also enjoying increased revenue from this new camera trend. They benefit from a sensor with a small pixel size (under 0.7 microns) but has a high resolution.
The 50MP sensor made by Samsung is indeed popular on many selling cellphones on the market, for example as the main camera on entry level cellphones and as a selfie camera on flagship cellphones. Samsung is expected to ship around 200 million units of the camera sensors by 2022.
Samsung still dominates the camera sensor market in the 100 MP and above class, and shipped around 150 million sensor units since they first released sensors with resolutions above 100 MP.