Sony to make a big play in the car technology market
After losing the war in television and portable music player market, Sony wants a piece of the hottest new battleground along with Google and Apple – Cars. Sony has recently invested around a million dollars for roughly 2% of Japanese startup ZMP that makes robot cars. We wonder what car insurance costs will be like for these robot cars? ZMP and Sony anticipate developing self-driving vehicle technologies with Sony’s image sensor technology and robotic technology by ZMP according to sources.
This move by Sony comes as technology is changing the game and the players in the automotive sector are creating driverless cars, which has received a surge of appeal from Silicon Valley.
Take for example Apple, who have been hiring experts in vehicle design and automotive technology to work at an undisclosed lab. Despite its fair share of troubles with smart phones and TV’s, the eyes of a camera – image sensors – is one of the few areas where Sony still remains a top contender. And now Sony hopes to replicate the success of its smartphone sensors with vehicles.
The smartphone is a much more sizable market, which is predicted to exceed 1 billion units in annual global sales compared to 100 million units in global vehicle sales in only a few years. But experts in the industry claim that there may be as many as 10 cameras installed in self-driving
vehicles when they are introduced, and these types of cameras are likely to be costlier than smartphone cameras. Sony’s image sensor general manager Shigeo Ohba says she anticipates the demand for automotive image sensors to rise considerably from 2017 until 2020.
She further states that Sony has to maintain number 1 position in automotive sensors by the time self driving cars roll out somewhere in 2020. With regards to value, Sony’s market share is about 40% for CMOS sensors used in Apple’s iPhones, cameras and tablets followed by
OmniVision and Samsung. In terms of CMOS sensors for cars, Sony comes in at number five, and the biggest question the Japanese electronics and entertain group is faced with is how they’re going to make up from this significant time lag.
The automotive supply chain is different and a proven track record in this business goes a long way. According to Sony officials, their expertise in digital cameras and smartphones will allow them to catch up with the competition. Sony revealed plans last October to mass produce
CMOS image sensors for automotive cameras by December 2015. These high quality cameras would be able to capture superb images even on moonless nights. The company has also recently introduced a business group that specialises in image sensors for cars and is actively hiring experts from the field.
Sony claims that even though they arrived late in the smartphone market, they were still able to garner a fair bit of attention, and they plan on doing the same with automotive cameras.