Sony to spend $376M on expanded camera sensor production for iPhone, other devices
For the second time this year, Sony has announced plans to expand its capacity to produce CMOS camera sensor chips, particularly to deal with component orders for products like Apple's iPhone.
The company will be spending 45 billion yen ($376 million) on growing Japanese facilities in Nagasaki and Yamagata, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. Just this February, Sony said it intended to invest $872.6 million in increasing CMOS production.
Sony is believed to be chiefly responsible for the camera sensors in the iPhone, which is continuing to see higher and higher sales. Just last quarter Apple sold 74.5 million iPhones, an increase of 46 percent year-over-year. The surge has been attributed to several factors, but most commonly pent-up demand for iPhones with larger screens comparable to rival products.
The main camera on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus uses an 8-megapixel sensor with unusually large pixels, measuring 1.5 microns. Added "Focus Pixel" technology speeds up autofocus. This is paired up with an f/2.2 lens, and on the 6 Plus, an optical image stabilizer.
One rumor has hinted that the next iPhone will have a dual-lens camera, enabling optical zoom. Current iPhones (and most other smartphones) only support digital zoom, which in reality simply blows up a part of an image, sacrificing detail.
The company will be spending 45 billion yen ($376 million) on growing Japanese facilities in Nagasaki and Yamagata, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. Just this February, Sony said it intended to invest $872.6 million in increasing CMOS production.
Sony is believed to be chiefly responsible for the camera sensors in the iPhone, which is continuing to see higher and higher sales. Just last quarter Apple sold 74.5 million iPhones, an increase of 46 percent year-over-year. The surge has been attributed to several factors, but most commonly pent-up demand for iPhones with larger screens comparable to rival products.
The main camera on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus uses an 8-megapixel sensor with unusually large pixels, measuring 1.5 microns. Added "Focus Pixel" technology speeds up autofocus. This is paired up with an f/2.2 lens, and on the 6 Plus, an optical image stabilizer.
One rumor has hinted that the next iPhone will have a dual-lens camera, enabling optical zoom. Current iPhones (and most other smartphones) only support digital zoom, which in reality simply blows up a part of an image, sacrificing detail.
Comments
I don't like this copycat scum company. I rather Apple make their own parts or team up with Canon who develop the best camera lens last I checked. I haven't been following the tech in years but Canon cameras are of the highest quality but I don't think they would partner with a competing device. Sony is like Sammy where they provide for competitors.
What? Sony's an honorable Japanese enterprise, they got ripped off by Samsung big time as well.
I don't like this copycat scum company. I rather Apple make their own parts or team up with Canon who develop the best camera lens last I checked. I haven't been following the tech in years but Canon cameras are of the highest quality but I don't think they would partner with a competing device. Sony is like Sammy where they provide for competitors.
I think Sony is actually one of the better companies to work with Apple. Sony screwed themselves over countless of times over the years with their archaic software-locking methods that made their great-products essentially useless.
They make good stuff. It's just the software-side is a joke.
Sony has been making inroads into photography, especially their mirrorless cameras like the A7-series that are giving dSLR's a run (arguably) for their money. They truly do make good hardware in my opinion. They just need to stay out of anything that involves creating software. Like Corning's Gorilla Glass, Sony's camera division is making serious change due to its relationship with Apple. They just better not do anything to screw it up.
If Apple can find someone (Sony) to make their components to their exacting - almost clinical OCD expectations - then I think that's fine. It's one less industry it doesn't have to absorb. Making cameras takes a lot of work, capital, etc.. I don't want Apple getting into the lens-polishing business.
I don't like this copycat scum company. I rather Apple make their own parts or team up with Canon who develop the best camera lens last I checked. I haven't been following the tech in years but Canon cameras are of the highest quality but I don't think they would partner with a competing device. Sony is like Sammy where they provide for competitors.
What the hell are you talking about? Sony has been one of the biggest innovators in the game. I think you're confusing Sony with Samsung...there's a true copycat scum company.
No love for Zeiss...?
Sony in talks to supply more image sensors to Apple
http://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Sony-in-talks-to-supply-more-image-sensors-to-Apple
My guess is, you won't see a zoom lense on a Apple device until they can get it to (state-of-the-art) zoom without mechanical moving parts.
Why would they go that route? Optics are the most important part of the camera. I would take better glass any day over digital processing. With digital you have to deal with the fixed reality of the shot at the time it was composed. With a decent Zoom you can compose a shot in camera while making use of all of the available pixel.
In the photographic world it's well known that Sony are the major maker of sensor chips for both Nikon and Canon DSLRs. An article at Chipworks describes some of the pro models using them... http://www.chipworks.com/en/technical-competitive-analysis/resources/blog/full-frame-dslr-cameras-part-1-nikon-vs-sony/
I'm also sure that Nikon still make the 'stepper motors' (I've forgotten the technical term) which Sony uses to manufacture the chips for Nikon... so these co-operations between rivals do work.
Greater advances in digital zoom? Digital zoom will never be as good as optical zoom. It will always result in a loss of resolution when compared to the original captured image. Digital zoom can work if you increase the resolution of the raw image to far more pixels than you need - but there are sacrifices to be made when you try to pack more pixels into a sensor. To mention just two - each pixel is smaller, therefore captures less light (when comparing sensors of the same physical size) so low-light performance tends to suffer. Also, higher resolution than you need results in larger image size which means you can store fewer images in memory. You get a much better image when you use a better sensor with enough pixels to print the image at the size you want it - using quality optics to capture the image instead of digital manipulation. This is one of the reasons why Apple has stayed with an 8MP sensors while others have sacrificed image quality and used sensors with a ridiculous number of megapixels in order to provide a "better" digital zoom experience. Don't misunderstand me though - for printing images larger than 8x10, you do need more megapixels - but you should probably leave those jobs to the digital SLR's which have a larger physical sensor to capture all of those extra pixels in high quality. As any iPhone owner knows, 8 megapixels in a phone is more than enough for casual photography and prints up to 8x10 - but in fact even 8MP is overkill for images that are only intended to be viewed on a computer.
Photography buffs can explain this much better than I - but since none of them have chimed in yet, I took a stab at it.
I have total love for Zeiss. I don't think they can compete on the miniature scale though. Zeiss is great for supplying larger lenses that are pricey, and don't sell too many of. I think if Zeiss got an order for 40 million camera lenses from Apple, Zeiss would run to the hills.
The camera is a tentpole feature of the iPhone right now. If Apple were to actually go to a dual camera system with the 6s (or some other means of substantially improving the camera), I would seriously consider doing something I've never done before -- buy a new iPhone two years in a row.
Eventually the camera in the iPhone is going to be so good that improvements will no longer be noticeable, and they'll have to move on to some other feature to add or improve. But for now, improvements to the camera will motivate upgrades.
I don't get this reply at all. The Nikon guys generally say they prefer Sony sensors to Canon's. Although not any more today, but for most of my life, Sony was an innovation leader. We had a Sony reel to reel home video system in the 1960s. It was amazing.
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