Kazuhiro Nogi | Getty
Sony expects to supply image sensors to 15 of the world’s 20 largest automakers by 2025, underscoring the company’s ambitions for electric vehicles and autonomous driving as it seeks to diversify beyond mobile phones.
The Japanese conglomerate marked its intention to boost the auto industry in 2020 when it unveiled a prototype EV, the Vision-S. This year it has launched an EV division and announced a joint venture with Honda to make cars.
Sony has now said it wants to provide the sensors that are critical to EVs and autonomous vehicles as it continues to make smartphone camera parts for Apple, Google and Samsung.
“We expect to be doing business in automotive image sensors with 75 percent of the top 20 automakers in the world by fiscal year 2025,” said Terushi Shimizu, head of Sony’s imaging and sensing business at a two-day investor event that ended Friday. . †
The 20 automakers would sell about 80 percent of cars worldwide within three years, he added. Sony plans to spend approximately 900 billion yen ($7 billion) on image sensor development between 2021-23, nearly three times as much as between 2015 and 2017.
Securing chips is an acute challenge as the pandemic has put pressure on supply chains and sharply reduced companies’ inventories.
Shimizu said Sony had invested in a joint venture with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company to build a $7 billion chip factory in Japan and wanted to deepen its partnership to secure stable supplies of logic semiconductors, which are used to power the operation of logic semiconductors. control electronic devices.
Akira Minamikawa, a Tokyo-based semiconductor analyst at research firm Omdia, said Sony was making progress after a stuttering start. “Sony had a hard time in the early days in terms of cars, but they have caught up. There have been problems with production capacity, but thanks to the partnership with TSMC, these are being resolved,” he added.
Sony also told investors it would ramp up production of its PlayStation 5 console and further diversify into mobile and PC gaming.
The PlayStation 5 console was launched in late 2020 and sold fewer units in its second year due to a shortage of parts due to the pandemic. Analysts expect it to close that gap in its third year and catch up with PS4 sales by 2024.
“We plan to significantly ramp up PS5 production this year, which will allow us to close the gap with PS4,” Sony’s gaming chief Jim Ryan told a news conference. He added that Sony plans to “make massive further increases in console production, taking us to production levels we’ve never reached before.”
But Ryan said delivery issues were his “top priority.” noting risks from COVID-19 lockdowns in China and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The company is still betting on an economic surge from China, hoping that PS5 sales will be driven in part by “unprecedented demand” in the world’s second-largest economy.
While console titles are expected to make up more than two-thirds of releases this year, Sony plans to release nearly half of its new games on mobile or PC by 2025, Ryan said.
“Ryan dropped a few small bombs during his presentation,” Tokyo-based gaming analyst Serkan Toto said, adding that Sony’s move into mobile and PC gaming has been “extremely aggressive” given the company’s modest presence on those platforms. platforms.
© 2022 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved. May not be redistributed, copied or modified in any way.
