[Courtesy of Samsung Electronics]
The global image sensor market is rapidly growing at an average annual growth rate of about 8.9 percent to reach $345.7 billion in 2028, according to global market research firm Allied Market Research.
During the last two years, the global demand for mobile sensors used in smartphones, webcams and tablet PCs skyrocketed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Grounded students and workers who have to use smart devices and laptops to study or work at home needed devices equipped with a high-definition camera. However, the supply cannot meet the market's demands due to the global supply chain disruptions caused by COVID-19.
Samsung said in a statement on September 2 that the company developed the ISOCELL HP1, the industry’s first 200-megapixel (MP) image sensor with 0.64-micrometer (μm) pixels. The ultra-high-definition sensor allows users to take bright pictures in any lighting environment because it has a special function that maximizes the amount of incoming light. The ISOCELL HP1 can merge four adjacent pixels and record 8K (7,680 x 4,320) videos at 30 frames per second without cropping the full image resolution.
"Samsung has been pioneering ultrafine pixel technologies that are taking high-resolution image sensors to the next level," Samsung Electronics' sensor business executive vice president Chang Duck-hyun was quoted as saying. He said that Samsung's new sensor will break barriers of mobile image sensors to lead the new trend in the next-generation mobile sensor technologies.
ISOCELL HP1 is the successor of "ISOCELL Bright HMX" released in November 2019, just before the coronavirus outbreak. Samsung and Chinese electronic powerhouse Xiaomi collaborated to fit the 108-megapixel image sensor into Xiaomi's smartphone "Xiaomi Mi Note 10," for the first time in the world.
reporter
Kim Joo-heon
jhkim123@ajunews.com
