Sony continues to invest deeply in imaging with 3D sensors

Aims to provide eyes for machines

For well over a year, regular readers will attest to my attempts to highlight one of Sony’s most overlooked and under-appreciated businesses, their image sensors. With the ability to provide a new form of functionality to everything from smartphones, to self driving vehicles, drones, and robots in factories, the upside for a world that’s edging towards more self aware products with each passing quarter is nearly limitless.

I’ve even gone so far as to argue that the Sony SC-1, their AI-enabled and remote-driven vehicle, is less about them getting in the vehicle space and more about showing off the possibility of their image sensor technology to would-be clients.

Yuji Nakamura and Yuki Furukawa write this for Bloomberg:

Inside the electronics maker’s Atsugi Technology Center, a research campus located an hour outside Tokyo, engineers and researchers are developing sensors that can detect people and objects by calculating how long it takes for light to reflect off surfaces.

All told, the market for these 3-D sensors will expand three-fold to $4.5 billion by 2022, according to researcher Yole Developpement, approaching Sony’s current revenue from image sensors.

Sony thinks its manufacturing expertise in developing camera chips — found in the latest iPhones — gives it a distinct edge. The Tokyo-based company dominates the image-sensor market, with a 49 percent share. While roughly a tenth of Sony’s revenue came from semiconductors in the latest quarter, almost a third of operating profit comes from the division.

What’s a bit striking to me is the lack of revenue from the division, despite owning nearly half of the smartphone market which already ships in extremely large quantities. Of course, with the rise of the aforementioned devices, that number (revenue and profits) could exponentially rise for Sony and they believe as much.

Satoshi Yoshihara, general manager at Sony:

This has the scale to become the next pillar of our business

Perhaps it’s my love for sci-fi films (and it doesn’t help that we just finally saw Blade Runner 2049 (I know I’m late!) a few nights ago), but the future we often see is one where machines are self aware and in order to become that, they need sight. More and more, it looks to be Sony who is going to be delivering that component.

Yoshihara:

Instead of making images for the eyes of human beings, we’re creating them for the eyes of machines. Whether it’s AR in smartphones or sensors in self-driving cars, computers will have a way of understanding their environment.

Perhaps not so coincidentally, Sony aims to release a new generation of AIBO, their robotic dogs in 2018. Guess what type of sensors they’ll be using for their vision.

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