Self-driving Cars to Fuel Demand for CIS

According to a recent report by TrendForce, automotive applications are expected to become the main growth driver of the CIS market, with its share of terminal applications projected to increase from around 9% in 2023 to approximately 15% in 2026.

As self-driving systems become more widespread, the demand for CIS in the automotive industry will continue to increase. Trendforce estimates that the average number of CIS used per car will increase from 3-4 in 2022 to 6-7 in 2026, with the overall market size growing from $1.8 billion in 2023 to over $3 billion in 2026 at a CAGR of over 20%.

On the other hand, due to the stagnation in the number of camera modules, the growth of the smartphone CIS market is expected to be in the low single digits. By 2026, CIS terminal applications in smartphones are predicted to decrease from 63% in 2023 to 51%, while automotive applications are projected to increase from 9% to 15%.

The report offers the following insights into the CIS market for smartphones:

• 10.5% decline in smartphone production in 2022: Due to factors such as war, pandemics, inflation, and inventory adjustments, global smartphone production in 2022 declined by 10.5% to 1.193 billion units, resulting in a 6.7% decline in the shipment of camera modules to 4.46 billion units and a 4% decline in the overall CIS market size to $18.9 billion.
• 5% growth in the CIS market size in 2023: The report predicts that the global smartphone production will increase by 0.9% to 1.203 billion units in 2023, with the shipment of camera modules reaching 4.62 billion units, up 3.6% YoY, driving the overall CIS market size to grow by 5% to $19.8 billion.
• Stagnation in the number of smartphone camera modules: From 2021 onwards, the proportion of shipments of smartphones with four and more rear camera modules has remained at 21%, slightly lower than the 23% in 2020, and is expected to remain at the same level in 2023.
• The trend towards large size and high-resolution CIS: In 2021, Samsung launched the world’s first 200-megapixel CIS, the ISOCELL HP1, while Sony introduced the IMX989 in 2022, marking the official entry of high-end smartphones into the one-inch era.

Additionally, driven by new features such as night photography, it is anticipated that the image quality of smartphone cameras may surpass that of single-lens reflex cameras (SLR) by 2024, resulting in the increase of market size and ASP of CIS.