Hot EV market drives growth of CMOS image sensor in 2022

By Kate Yuan

(JW Insights) Mar 31 -- Automotive CMOS image sensor (CIS) grew against the declining trend of the image sensor industry with a 20% increase in 2022, said Hu Wenge, VP of technology of China’s leading CIS company SmartSens (思特威), at the 2023 China IC Leadership Summit.

The image sensor industry suffered its revenue drop in 2022, down from $20.5 billion in 2021 to $19 billion in 2022.

Hu pointed out that the global EV market boom in 2022 is one of the reasons for the growth of automotive CIS. Last year, global EV sales surged by 55% compared with 2021. Sales in China increased by 82% year on year, accounting for 58% of global EV sales in 2022.

Moreover, the intelligent trend of automobiles has driven up the demand for multi-cameras in a single vehicle. As autonomous driving level of intelligent vehicles becomes higher, the number of cameras have increased from 1-2 in cars of L0-L2, to more than 10 in L2++. The L3-L5 intelligent vehicles will be equipped with over 18 cameras, Hu predicted.