Sony Semiconductor Solutions and TSMC are forming a new joint venture in Japan to develop and manufacture next-generation image sensors. This new joint venture would combine Sony’s sensor design expertise with TSMC’s manufacturing process technology strengths, as well as deepen a long-standing partnership between the two companies.
Though the biggest reason for this joint venture is to help bring down chip costs.
According to Reuters, the joint venture will be majority-owned by Sony and will set up development and production lines in a new fabrication plant in Koshi City, which is in the Kumamoto region.
Sony and TSMC have both signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding for this partnership, and are discussing investments into the joint venture. So it is still a long way from being final.
This new joint venture would also explore opportunities in physical artificial intelligence applications, like automotive and robotics. A bit interesting after Sony pulled out of their partnership with Honda on AFEELA.
This venture could help bring down the costs of image sensors
Bringing down the cost of image sensors is a pretty big deal because Sony makes the majority of smartphone camera sensors. Samsung is slowly starting to eat into its market share there, but most phones still use Sony sensors. And if they can bring down that cost, it could help stabilize smartphone prices from the RAMageddon.
Though by the time this joint venture gets underway and we start seeing the lower prices, RAMageddon might be over, with RAM prices going back down. At least we hope that will be the case.
Either way, cheaper camera sensors are always a good thing, especially as smartphones add more cameras every year. We still haven’t gotten back to the Nokia 9 PureView from 2019 with 5 actually usable cameras on the back.
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