"In 2016, the CIS (CMOS Image Sensor) market size approximated USD10.516 billion, rising by 5.6% from a year ago, but with an obvious fall in the speed of growth compared with the growth rate of 13.5% in 2015, mainly because medium- and high-end products are monopolized by Sony and the manufacturers in low- and medium-end fields are hard to break through the technological barriers and do nothing but hit the price war even in the vehicle field.
Although influenced by factors like the Earthquake and the Appreciation of Japanese Yen, Sony still monopolized the medium- and high-end fields by dint of its overwhelming performance superiority and saw an upsurge of 32.9% in its revenue in 2016; by contrast, other players excluding Panasonic and Hynix saw decline. It is expected that, in 2017, the CIS market will grow 4.0%, Sony will see a growth rate of at least 10%, and most others will continue to suffer losses. In spite of being not much expected, the mobile phone market is still the most important market and Sony still monopolizes the high-end mobile phone market.
In 2015, the global CCM (CMOS Camera Module) market size reported USD16.611 billion, up 3.8% from a year earlier but the lowest growth rate since 2010. In 2016, as the shipment of Apple phones with the highest single price of CCM fell, the world CCM market was at low ebb and down 0.5%. Due to the dual-camera stimulus in 2017, the global market rebounds substantially with the growth rate of 4.3% and the size estimated to be USD17.232 billion in 2017 and USD18.512 billion in 2020.
In 2016, Chinese manufacturers made remarkable achievements, while South Korean counterparts saw a drop or slight rise in revenue due to their heavy reliance on Apple and Samsung. Among Chinese players, Q-Tech enjoys the highest growth rate up to 84.5%, followed by Truly, both of which benefited from the outstanding performance of big customers OPPO and VIVO.
It is anticipated that monochrome dual-camera with same pixel will be the mainstream for smart phone brands except Apple in the future, as it is more affordable and can improve nightscape significantly (visible effect betterment for consumers), while Apple will persist in duel-camera design enriching depth of focus. Smart phones tend to be highly homogenized. Although they are still not quite satisfied with the dual-cameras, consumers are more impressed with dual-cameras than mono-camera. So, dual-camera is expected to be a standard configuration in high-end smart phones, and the penetration rate till 2020 would be as high up to 30-40%."
