CMOS Industry Consolidates, CCD Fades

by David Kender
Published on Jan 24, 2006 7:00 AM



January 24, 2006 - Yesterday Doug Freeman of American Technology Research Inc. told EETimes that we should expect to see a consolidation in the number of companies supplying CMOS imaging sensors (CIS).

While there are approximately 40 CIS suppliers today – including Canon, Cypress, Kodak, Samsung, Canon, Toshiba, and others – competition and falling prices will likely drive all but a few out of business. “Ultimately, when the market settles,” Freedman told EETimes in an interview, “I think that there will be three major players and six niche players.”

Camcorders and photography enthusiasts may be familiar with CMOS technology in products such as new Sony DCR-DVD505 Handycam, but CIS has been finding its way into a number of different industries. Just today, Sirific Wireless introduced the first single-chip CMOS RF transceiver for mobile handsets. Similar announcements have been trickling in from the cellular phone, computer, and medical technology markets.

This boom in growth will eventually contract, experts predict, leaving certain suppliers, namely Sony and Samsung, in advantageous positions. Though the companies are new to the CIS industry, their strong market share for products that use CMOS sensors could be the factor that puts them on top of the competition.

Sony’s DCR-DVD505 camcorder uses an Advanced HAD 1/3-inch ClearVID CMOS sensor, with a 1910K effective pixel count. While Sony incorporated CMOS technology in one camcorder last year, the new ClearVID design offers several advances over previous CMOS and CCD designs (read more here).

CMOS sensors seem to winning a war against CCDs, experts also predict, as the latter’s technological possibilities are beginning to exhaust. CMOS chips are cheaper and easier to produce in mass volume. They can also be integrated more easily into the product, increasing efficiency and conserving battery power.

No other major camcorder manufacturer has announced plans to use CMOS chips in their 2006 consumer-level product line. So far, the DCR-DVD505 is Sony’s only 2006 consumer camcorder to use a CMOS chip, though prosumer and professional-grade video equipment has shown an increasing integration of CMOS technology.