Interview with Jérôme Baron of Yole Developpement on CMOS innovation

14 February 2011

CMOS image sensor technology has been the big growth story in this market in recent years. Streamlined innovation is key as it is a market that required rapid response to shifting demand. ISE2011 Director, Robert Stead, interviews Jérôme Baron, Leader - MEMS and Sensor Manufacturing at market analysts Yole Developpement:

Q: Please briefly describe Yole Developpement's involvement with the image sensors industry.
As a market research and strategy consulting company active in the MEMS & Sensor markets since 1998, it was quite straightforward for our company to extend our investigations to the area of CMOS image sensors, which has grown fast recently to become by far the biggest sensor market today.

Q: What do you see at the big growth applications over the next 5-10 years?
Image sensors are today part of our everyday life: from cell-phone cameras, to notebook webcams, digital cameras, video camcorders to security & surveillance systems. In the future, higher added value markets will become more and more important, such as sensors for medical applications, automotive safety features but also gaming as it was recently demonstrated for the
first time by Microsoft with its Kinect module.

Q: What are the biggest influences on the market right now?
As far as which players have the biggest impact on this market, all the big image sensors companies are fighting to get the 'critical manufacturing volume' necessary to remain a key player in the long run. Today, you cannot avoid the cell-phone market if you want to reach this critical volume to survive... If TSMC reached this critical volume a few years ago already, Samsung and Sony have been quite impressive recently as the two players successfully ramped-up aggressively their capacities to target both the high-end and low-end image sensor markets at the same time. This strategy to run for this capacity access will pay for them in the long term because time has come for these high-end and low-end markets to converge now... so they are very likely to remain among the key driving forces in this industry!

Q: CMOS is the future, for now at least in mainstream applications. What disruptive technologies could be around the corner?
There are so many technologies being developed at the moment! We forecast CMOS image sensor technology will continue to expand and finally take the advantage over the remaining CCD application space because 300mm infrastructure is now building-up in Asia and BSI (Backside illuminated) sensor architecture is now a reality: BSI CMOS image sensors have now entered into
many high-performance CCD applications such as space sensors, machine vision sensors, video cameras, DSLR cameras and now smart-phones as well! Sony and Samsung, again, have taken the lead in the development of such innovative sensor architectures. In the high-end camera phone market segment, we do see disruptive new camera module concepts coming including wafer-scale auto-focus, optical image stabilization and computational imaging features. In the ultra-competitive low-end market, the race towards wafer level cameras and digital zoom will enable the few remaining players to preserve their margins in this aggressive and cost driven market. In the future, higher added-value markets such as medical, automotive, security and gaming related sensors will need to get vision and recognition features with High Dynamic Range and NIR capabilities.

Q: The industry has come through a difficult period; do you see a change in supply chain demographics in the future?
Today, cost and volume are the main driving forces to remain a relevant player in this industry. But tomorrow, it could be slowly changing because of the emergence of these higher-value medical, security and automotive sensor markets where image sensor suppliers will need to broaden their customer base and meet the specificities of each application.

Q: What's going on in BRIC markets - do you see them having a big influence in the future?
We have been quite intrigued by the recent success of Galaxy Core in China: together with wafer foundry SMIC, they have been able to ship more than 100 Million image sensors last year, cutting cost by two on the low-end CIS market thanks to an innovative, simplified BEOL architecture. And it is interesting to compare Galaxy Core's recent success to the growth of China's white-box handset market, which now also claims to be over 100 million unbranded Chinese cell-phones every year... But the emergence of a Galaxy Core should not be considered as a success story nor a threat as the road is long for such new imaging companies to become just a little Omnivision, Aptina Imaging or Samsung...

Q: If you had your own significant fund to invest (and I'm not saying you don't!), where would you put your money?
That is a great question! I would think instantly about Lens Vector: this company is developing a breakthrough auto-focus concept. It is based on liquid crystal technology and manufacturing is done at the wafer-level on glass substrates. This company is meeting all the optical, thickness, size and cost specifications of what MUST be the camera module auto-focus of tomorrow... they have come up ahead of everybody with a visionary technology and all their competitors (SEMCO, poLight, Sony, ST, etc...) are now moving into the same direction!

Thanks for the tip!
Jerome Baron will speak at the upcoming ISE2011 at 09.45 on conference 1.
To find out more, log onto www.image-sensors.com