"Our CMOS image sensors experienced a slow first half since 4G smartphone adoption in China remained weak. The lack of smartphone replacement demand hurt the shipments of our high end product offerings. Entering the third quarter, we are pleased to report that we have secured several new customers in the second half mass production pipeline with our 8-megapixel and 13-megapixel sensors."
SeekingAlpha earnings call transcript quotes the company CEO Jordan Wu:
"And on CMOS image sensors, our 8-megapixel and 13-megapixel, we are a latecomer to the demo of CMOS image sensors, you are aware and the very weak China demand this year certainly hasn't helped a player such as us. In particular for high-end products, customers they are actually more reluctant to adopt a newcomer's product, in particular when the demand is weak and when they probably sit on the higher level of inventory. But we are now seeing very promising new design wins of several customers which are scheduled to start mass production in this quarter and a lot also in Q4."
Update: Himax investor presentation dated by Aug. 2015 quotes IHS market forecast:
Just a couple days before that, in TowerJazz Q2 2015 earnings call, the CEO Russell Ellwanger said:
"For CMOS image sensor, in the last quarter we started mass production of 13 megapixel sensors at TPSCo based on our state-of-the-art 1.12 micro pixel technology. The 8 megapixel sensor with the same simple technology will add to mass production in the next quarter. For silicon it’s showing an excellent picture quality. We have won another customer for the very high end photography market in our 12-inch Fab.
Overall, we have many design winds for the 12-inch Fab that will materialize to mass production in 2016 and 2017, not just in smartphone high-end camera markets, but also in the high end photography and the security markets. In parallel, we are moving very fast with the development of global shutter technology in the array factor, TPSCo’s 8-inch 110 nanometer fab. We already won three customers from this technology which is the natural continuation of the road map where state-of-the-art global shutter technology presently running at 0.18 micro in Fab2 in Migdal HaEmek.
The mixed sensor production in Fab2 continues to steadily grow in all areas, expressly gesture controlled 3D, high-end photography, industrial cameras, medical dental x-ray sensors. We have new projects coming from our existing customers as well as new customers from all geographies including China.
Our focus for the next quarter is to support the very fast ramp expected in TPSCo 12-inch fab with our CIS customers, complete the development of our global shutter technology and support the ramp of our existing products in Fab2 that are expected to grow significantly in 2016. In parallel, we continue to put a lot of focus on the development of gesture recognition sensors with several leading customers in both the time of flight technology and structure by technology. We expect the gesture control segment to be a dominant part of our business in the coming years.
Finally, we have previously announced a partnership with [indiscernible] to build next generation, infrared cameras for smartphone application. We have successfully completed the development and are now shipping production volume of this technology supporting [indiscernible] new product ramp."
