IFNews publishes UBS cost analysis of Samsung Galaxy S10, S10+ and S10 e smartphones with cameras accounting for 14-16% of the BOM:Samsung Galaxy S10 5G also features front and rear ToF cameras:"S10 5G comes with total 4 cameras on the rear side.

FT discusses the US ban on components sale to Huawei. As Panasonic and Toshiba halt shipping their chips to the Chinese company, a question arises about Sony image sensors. They are used in all Huawei flagship phones and are difficult to substitute.

Korea-based Yanta Research publishes its view on CIS market shares with Hynix taking #4 spot on the chart:

Pixart and National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan publish an open access paper "Fast Imaging in the Dark by using Convolutional Network" by Mian Jhong Chiu, Guo-Zhen Wang, and Jen-Hui Chuang presented at 2019 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS):"While fast imaging in low-lig...

GlobeNewsWire: Himax and its wholly-owned subsidiary, Emza Visual Sense announce WiseEye 2.0 NB, an intelligent vision solution for notebook computers.

BusinessWire: Magik Eye reveals Invertible Light, a new method for depth sensing that is said to enable the smallest, fastest and most power-efficient 3D sensing.

InVision: Emberion publishes an article on its graphene-based image sensors:"The key features of the graphene-based VIS-SWIR sensor technology are the wide spectral response range, excellent sensitivity and noise performance, and large dynamic operation range.

ST 2019 Capital Markets Day brings us an update on the company's imaging business:

Oxford University, UK, publishes a PhD Thesis "Integrating logarithmic wide dynamic range CMOS image sensors" by Mus'ab B Shaharom:"Conventional CMOS image sensors with a logarithmic response attempt to address the limited dynamic range of the linear digital image sensors by exploiting the subthresh...

PRNewswire, CTech: Isreal-based MultiVu, developing 3D imaging solutions using a single sensor and deep learning derived algorithms, announces the completion of a $7M seed round led by OurCrowd, Cardumen Capital and Hong Kong based investment firm Junson Capital.

SeekingAlpha: TowerJazz quarterly earnings call gives an update on the company image sensor business:"Moving into the sensors business unit, which includes both our visual CMOS image sensors and non-visual sensors.

ON Semi posts a video explaining its Hayabusa image sensor family Super-Exposure feature: HDR with LED flicker mitigation:

In addition to the conferences in Brussels and Detroit, Autosens announces a third location for its yearly events - Hong Kong:

BusinessKorea: "Although we presented our goal of becoming the No. 1 player in the system semiconductor sector in 2030, we don't want to wait that long in the sensor market," said Park Yong-in, EVP for Samsung’s sensor business.

International Image Sensor Workshop to be held in Snowbird, UT on June 24-27, 2019 publishes its program. There are 55 regular papers and 33 posters in the program this year.

IEICE Electronics Express publishes Tianjin University, China, paper "A novel TDC/ADC hybrid reconstruction ROIC for LiDAR" by Xianzhao Xia, Mao Ye, Jiaji He, Kai Hu, and Yiqiang Zhao."A novel low complexity TDC/ADC hybrid reconstruction read-out circuit (ROIC) is proposed for LiDAR.

The Canon RF 28-70mm f2L USM is a general-purpose zoom for Canon’s EOS R full-frame mirrorless system boasting an industry-leading f2 focal ratio. It may miss out on the wider 24mm coverage of typical 24-70mm f2.8 zooms, but uniquely boasts an extra stop of aperture.

ResearchInChina report "China Passenger Car Camera Market Report, 2019Q1" says:In China, front view monocular camera is the one largely demanded in passenger car market, with its installations in 2019Q1 surging by 71.

Techcrunch, Wired, Forbes-1, Forbes-2: Aurora, an AI self-driving startup that recently raised $530M in Round B, acquires Montana-based 10 year-old FMCW Doppler LiDAR developer Blackmore. The 70 Blackmore employees will join the 250 Aurora's engineers and technicians.

PRNewswire: OmniVision announces the OVM7251 VGA CameraCubeChip module built on the 3um OmniPixel 3-GS global shutter pixel. The module is available in an 850nm version for AR/VR eye tracking, and a 940nm version for machine vision and 3D sensing in mobile facial authentication.

Sony posts the following message at LinkedIn: "Sony Semiconductor Solutions, the largest image sensor supplier in the world, is establishing new design centers across Europe (Norway, Germany, Switzerland).

ON Semi demos its Hayabusa super-exposure technology for automotive HDR with LFM:

PRNewswire: OmniVision announced the OV5678 said to be the industry’s first 5MP RGB-IR image sensor for 2-in-1 convertible laptops. This sensor enables a single camera with greater accuracy for IR Windows Hello facial authentication as well as RGB images for selfies and videoconferencing.

PRNewswire: OmniVision announces the OX01D10, a 1MP image sensor for automotive applications. This sensor brings together split-pixel and dual conversion gain (DCG) technology, artifact-free motion capture, HDR of up to 120dB, as well as LED flicker mitigation (LFM).

Arxiv.

Dialog Semiconductor announces its Configurable Mixed-signal Integrated Circuit (CMIC) device with industry-leading LDO regulator performance, the SLG51000. The SLG51000 features high PSRR and lowe output voltage noise and is aimed to power camera and sensor systems.

MDPI Sensors paper "Light-In-Flight Imaging by a Silicon Image Sensor: Toward the Theoretical Highest Frame Rate" by Takeharu Goji Etoh, Tomoo Okinaka, Yasuhide Takano, Kohsei Takehara, Hitoshi Nakano, Kazuhiro Shimonomura, Taeko Ando, Nguyen Ngo, Yoshinari Kamakura, Vu Truon Son Dao, Anh Quang Nguy...

PRNewswire: ActLight SA announces the closing of its Series C equity financing. The amount of raised money has not been not reported. Swisscom Venture served as the lead investor, along with investiere.ch, new investor Quan Funds and other private investors.

IEEE Photonics Journal publishes an open access paper "177 dB Linear Dynamic Range Pixels of Interest DSLR CAOS Camera" by Nabeel A. Riza and Mohsin A. Mazhar from University College Cork, Cork, Ireland.

Toronto, Canada-based Sheba Microsystems kindly sent me a presentation about its MEMS AF and OIS solution:

Science: "At a depth of 1000 meters, the last glimmer of sunlight is gone. But over the past 15 years, researchers have realized that the depths are pervaded by a faint bioluminescence from flashing shrimp, octopus, bacteria, and even fish.

Law360: The Boston, MA jury's verdict is said to be entirely in favor of SiOnyx LLC, the Black Silicon company, co-founded by Harvard professor Eric Mazur and the President and Fellows of Harvard College (see the previous post here). The jury found that U.S. subsidiary Hamamatsu Corp.

Edmund Optics presentation at Spectronet shows how the lens MTF limits imaging system performance:

Samsung introduces two new 0.8μm pixel CMOS sensors – the 64MP Samsung ISOCELL Bright GW1 and 48Mp ISOCELL Bright GM2. With this, Samsung expands its 0.8μm image sensor lineup from existing 20MP to 64MP resolutions.

PRNewswire: "Analysts predict that 20% of embedded notebook cameras will remain at VGA resolutions for the foreseeable future, due to cost considerations in the entry-level market," said Jason Chiang, product marketing manager at OmniVision.

From Deloitte doc: "In 2018, Shanghai Will Semiconductor acquired a 85% stake in Beijing SuperPix Micro Technology and a 96% stake in Beijing OmniVision Technologies for USD2.18bn to take advantage of the high-end technics of OmniVision and cost control capabilities of SuperPix.

The Fujifilm GFX 100 is a medium-format mirrorless camera with 100 Megapixels, built-in stabilisation, phase-detect autofocus, a large and very detailed viewfinder and 4k video.

As noted in comments to my previous post on Heriot Watt University Ge-on-Si SPADs, there is a similar work in Eduardo Charbon group in EPFL and Delft University.

Sony held a corporate strategy meeting FY19 and set the directions for its CIS business:In imaging, Sony was able to deliver a stable supply of high value-added product to a market that is evolving not only toward higher resolution, but also toward multiple sensors per camera and larger sized sensor...

Gerald Buller leading Single-Photon Group in Heriot Watt University, UK, presents Ge-on-Si SPAD devices which are supposed to solve the low IR detection efficiency problems of the regular Si-based SPADs:Recently, the group has published a Nature paper "High performance planar germanium-on-silicon si...

The Sigma 28mm f1.4 Art is a medium wide-angle lens designed for full-frame bodies and available in Nikon F, Canon EF, Sony E and Sigma mounts, with the Leica L version arriving later in 2019. It joins Sigma's highly-respected Art series, filling a gap between their 24mm and 35mm options.

University of Oxford PhD thesis "Investigations of time-interpolated single-slope analog-to-digital converters for CMOS image sensors" by Deyan Levski explores time stretching and other concepts improving SS-ADC resolution and speed:"The focus of the presented investigations here is to shed light on...

Reuters: Sony and Microsoft will partner on new innovations to enhance customer experiences in their direct-to-consumer entertainment platforms and AI solutions.As part of the memorandum of understanding, Sony and Microsoft will explore collaboration in the areas of semiconductors and AI.

Cadence expands the high end of its Tensilica Vision DSP IP family with the introduction of Vision Q7 delivering up to 1.82 tera operations per second (TOPS). Escalating demand for image sensors in edge applications is driving growth of the embedded vision market.

Imec kindly sent me more info on its thin-film on-display image sensor that can be used for fingerprint or other scanning applications:

Imec: Holst Centre, an innovation initiative of imec and TNO, has developed a large-area optical fingerprint sensor that is over 70% transparent for integrating on top of LCD displays.

PRNewswire: OmniVision announces the OAX4010 automotive ISP featuring the new HDR and LFM Engine (HALE) combination algorithm.

It has been a while since my previous post about Huaian Imaging Device Manufacturer Corp (HIDM). A lot more becomes known about the company and its business:"HiDM was founded in January 19, 2016, and the total investment is expected to exceed 50 billion RMB.

A 2018 Emberion presentation gives quite a lot o information about the company's progress and products:An earlier 2017 presentation compares graphene sensors with incumbent technologies.

SeekingAlpha: Himax Q1 2019 earnings call gives an update on its imaging business:"First on 3D Sensing business update. At present, Android smartphone’s front facing 3D sensing adoption is still hindered by the high hardware cost, long development lead time, and the lack of killer applications.