Will Semiconductor (WillSemi), China's top image sensor manufacturer, and other companies in the sector have accelerated their transformation efforts as the automotive electronics market has been able to maintain growth despite declining prices and weakening demand in the overall market.
As autonomous driving develops and high-end advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) rapidly become popularized, it is expected that the scale of the automotive CMOS image sensor (CIS) market will continue to expand. According to market analysts, the size of the global automotive CIS market will go from US$1.91 billion in 2021 to US$3.27 billion in 2025, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.4%.
The current industry leader in automotive CIS, Onsemi, has a market share of 60%. WillSemi is currently in second place and saw its global market share increase to 29% in 2021. Besides WillSemi, other Chinese manufacturers like Galaxycore and Smartsens Technology have also focused on automotive electronics and sped up their new product launches.
Faced with the demand slowdown of consumer electronics and high inventory pressure, WillSemi has accelerated its plans for multiple aspects, especially in the fast-growing automotive CIS industry. Its touch and display driver integration (TDDI) IC business has also continued to increase as well.
WillSemi's touch and display solutions have shown explosive growth, reporting revenue of CNY1.188 billion (US$ 174 million) for the first half of 2022, an 88.02% annual increase. As with automotive electronics, its revenue share in WillSemi's image sensor solutions has increased from 14% in 2021 to 22% in the first half of 2022.
WillSemi stated that automotive CIS products have already covered the range from Video Graphics Array (VGA) to eight million pixels. The applications they support include ADAS, driver monitor system (DMS), electronic rear-view mirror, dashboard camera, rearview and panoramic imagery, and more. In recent years, on top of the foundation of collaborating with western mainstream car brands, WillSemis solutions are also being introduced in large numbers to China's traditional car brands and new manufacturers. They are expected to be the new revenue growth focus.
WillSemis is expanding its investment in the automotive chip industry. In May of 2022, WillSemi announced that a wholly-owned subsidiary will purchase shares in automotive chipmaker Ingenic at a price less than CNY4 billion. If this purchase goes through, with Ingenic's leading position in products such as automotive storage and automotive analog connection, WillSemis and Ingenic can complement each other on the automotive chip platform and look to continue to expand their market share in global automotive electronics.