Samsung Electronics and Taiwan are working on the same stage, as both of them are binding in the Alliance for the image sensors.
There is a new partnership in town as Samsung Electronics and Taiwan are shaking hands to compete with Sony. This partnership seems to be part of Samsung’s dual manufacturing strategy aimed at enhancing efficiency and gaining a competitive edge in pricing.
Industry sources unveiled that Samsung is continuing its cooperation with UMC as part of its “Fab-lite” strategy for image sensors. The ‘Fab-lite’ suggests a concentrated operation of Samsung’s image sensor factories. Under this model, the Korean giant will handle the primary processes while outsourcing the remaining steps to external foundries.
The Korean giant is using a two-notch approach for image sensor production: the first is going with in-house high-performance, and the second is outsourcing lower-cost sensors used in devices such as vacuums and appliances. This outsourcing will help in converting light into digital signals and performing image correction steps. Overall, with these two approaches, Samsung can easily concentrate on the most critical aspects of high-performance sensors.
The foundry handling the outsourced image sensor production for Samsung Electronics is UMC, a Taiwanese company. UMC ranks fourth globally with a 6% share of the foundry market and practices legacy foundry processes such as 22 nm and 28 nm. Through this technique of dual manufacturing, the Korean Electronics firm is closely chasing Sony, which is currently holding over 50% of the market share in the image sensor segment.
Back in 2021, Samsung Electronics was the first in the world to produce a 200 million-pixel image sensor, and it aims to debut sensors with over 500 million pixels next year.
