Sony can’t keep up with growing demand for camera sensors for smartphones

The demand for camera sensors for smartphones is so great that Sony can barely keep up with their production. For the second year in a row, factories will continue to operate 24 hours a day during the holiday season, but even that is unlikely to resolve the backlog.

According to Bloomberg, the Japanese electronics giant doubled its capital expenditure for the production of smartphone camera sensors this fiscal year to 280 billion yen or 2.3 billion euros. In addition, Sony is building a new factory in Nagasaki to further increase production capacity. “However, it appears that those massive investments are still not enough to turn the tide,” said Terushi Shimizu, the head of Sony’s Semiconducter Manufacturing Corporation. “We have to apologize to customers because we simply cannot produce enough.”

A major cause of the growing demand for sensors for smartphone cameras is that manufacturers are equipping their phones with more and more cameras. Many top devices now have three or even four lenses on the back.

After the PlayStation, the production of camera sensors for smartphones has become Sony’s most profitable industry. In October, the electronics giant raised its revenue outlook for the chip unit by 38 percent to 200 billion yen, or 1.65 billion euros, after second-quarter profits jumped nearly 60 percent.

By the end of March 2021, Sony wants to invest a total of another 700 billion yen or 5.77 billion euros in the lucrative industry. Most of that will be used to ramp up monthly production from the current 109,000 wafers to 138,000 wafers, Bloomberg reports.