Smartphone cameras are evolving at a rapid pace due to the availability of high resolution and large format image sensors, offering optimal camera capabilities for different capture scenarios. The image sensor market witnesses strong demand from Smartphone OEMs, owing to the continued adoption of more than one image sensor in a device, driven by multi-camera applications. The image sensor vendors continue to leverage this opportunity with new product offerings.

Today, OmniVision Technologies announced its new 64MP, OV64B image sensor for the smartphone industry. The vendor becomes the first to offer a 64MP image sensor with the smallest pixel size of 0.7µm, aimed at the high-end smartphone market that requires a lower PCB footprint.

Image Source: OmniVision

Key Features

• The OV64B is a 64MP High Pixel image sensor with a sensor size of 1/1.2" and a pixel size of 0.7µm built on OmniVision’s PureCel®Plus stacked die technology.
• The sensor combines a 4 cell color filter array to provide a 64MP high-resolution Bayer output image after re-mosaicing. While capturing in low-light conditions, the sensor uses 4-to-1 pixel binning mechanism to amplify the total pixel size to 1.4µm and output a 16MP high-resolution binned image with high light sensitivity.
• The sensor enables support for capturing videos in 8K at 30 fps and 4K videos at 60fps, along with 64MP video captures at 15fps.
• The sensor supports 2x digital zoom, 2x2 microlens phase detection autofocus (ML PDAF) for improved autofocus accuracy in low-light captures.

Outlook

The new 64MP OV64B image sensor becomes the second offering in the 64MP image sensor portfolio for the vendor after the earlier announcement of its OV64C image sensor. OmniVision Technologies product offerings now include 64MP (OV64B, OV64C), 48MP (OV48B, OV48C), and 32MP (OV32A) image sensors in the high-resolution sensor segment.

We note that in CY 2019, the smartphone image sensor market saw a double-digit growth in revenue as well as shipments year-over-year. In Q4 2019, we saw Sony Semicon claim 53 percent revenue share followed by Samsung LSI and OmniVision Technologies, which is highlighted in our report.  Sony and Samsung have been intensifying the competition in the smartphone image sensor market for the main camera sensor configuration while OmniVision has been focusing on the secondary camera sensor configurations in smartphones along with SK Hynix.

The 64MP OV64B sensor can be used in the main, ultra-wide or telephoto rear-facing camera configurations, which would attract demand from China-based Smartphone OEM customers who are aggressively looking to differentiate their device capabilities.

Key Questions

• We have seen the availability of 64MP image sensors from Sony, Samsung and OmniVision, which further intensifies the competition for High Pixel image sensors. Most of the 64MP sensors are being applied for main camera use, but OmniVision hopes to gain traction on secondary camera configurations such as ultra-wide and telephoto cameras. It will be interesting to see where this new 64MP sensor would fit within the portfolio of Smartphone OEMs.
  
  
• The vendor has made samples available for smartphone customers and would likely be seen in the devices launched in H2 2020. Considering the premium positioning of the sensor, Which Smartphone vendor would be the first to launch their device with the new OV64B image sensor? And at what price-tier?