United Microelectronics (UMC), through its takeover of Mie Fujitsu Semiconductor (MIFS), has entered the supply chain for Sony's CMOS image sensors.

Safety first.

It is dangerous for Sony

Sony’s image sensor sales are predicted to fall from 240 billion yen in the second quarter of this year to 130 billion yen in the second quarter of next year.

This is leading to an opportunity for Samsung. The latecomer in the industry has focused on Xiaomi, Vivo and others rather than Huawei.

Samsung is aiming to rise to the top in the global image sensor market by 2030. Last year, Samsung’ share in the market was 18.1 percent and Sony’s was 53.5 percen

Sony has issues

Sony buys patents

"The respective reassignment document lists 35 simple patent families with active US patents. Looking at the drawings shows that the portfolio comprises various technologies like packaging, semiconductor process, systems, computer memory, and image projection. Surprisingly, there are several first page drawings which points to gate-all-around transistor (GAA) technologies, the expected next transistors technology.

This finding was not expected: Sony is not known to be active in advanced CMOS transistor technologies like GAA, or at least not obviously known.

...a quick screening shows that 10 patent families are about to gate-all-around transistors and 3 families relate to finFET transistors. On its face value, the described structures and methods even resemble gate-all-around structures which are published in the literature.

Sony ranks sixth with a small but strong GAA portfolio. Difference between the portfolio size (number of simple patent families) and the portfolio strength (Patent Asset Index) is remarkable: The portfolio strength is more than 10-times larger than the Portfolio Size. This ratio demonstrates the high average quality, measured by the PatentSight Competitive Impact, of Sony's gate-all-around patents, as the Patent Asset Index is the product of Competitive Impact and Portfolio Size.