A memory boom that is squeezing wafer allocation is now casting a shadow over the image sensor market, where Chinese vendors just pushed their home nation past South Korea as the world’s second-largest supplier. Yole Group’s 2025 competitive landscape shows Chinese makers behind only Sony, which still claims close to 50 percent of global CIS revenue on premium mobile imaging, Apple-related demand and advanced stacked architectures.
Omnivision grew at a double-digit clip, while SmartSens posted the strongest momentum among major players across mobile, security, automotive and consumer, with GalaxyCore and Gpixel adding to the surge. Yole analyst Anas Chalak ties the rise to supply chains as much as markets, noting Chinese suppliers pair domestic foundry access with international manufacturing routes and tighter ties to local camera module makers.
Samsung keeps its spot as the second-largest single vendor, but its revenue is broadly flat, caught between Sony’s premium push and Chinese pricing in mid- and low-end tiers. onsemi lost ground under automotive competition, and SK Hynix kept trimming its CIS business to focus on memory.
The new risk, Yole warns, is that AI-driven demand for HBM and advanced DRAM tightens memory supply and lifts prices, feeding into CIS through wafer allocation, stacked architectures, buffers and camera-module roadmaps from 2026 onward. Sony holds 57 percent of mobile, while automotive is the battleground, with Omnivision leading and Sony gaining in high-resolution ADAS and viewing cameras.
