The smartphone camera sensor market is mostly dominated by Sony and Samsung. However, in this market, the South Korean tech giant is still behind the Japanese company. According to a report by Counterpoint Research, Sony dominates the image sensor market with a market share of 54%. Samsung has a 29% share of the market, while SK Hynix barely managed to enter the top-five rankings with a 5% market share.Samsung is now reportedly planning to use AI to take on its Japanese rival. The company is now trying to develop and launch mobile camera sensors with on-device AI capabilities.
How Samsung may add AI to its smartphone camera sensors
According to a report by Business Korea, Samsung is adding AI into its camera image sensor business. Earlier this year, the South Korean firm unveiled its third 200MP camera sensor. At this time, the company announced the Zoom Anyplace technology, which is powered by AI.
Samsung’s Zoom Anyplace technology offers simultaneous 4K video recording of the full frame and a zoomed-in part of that frame.
Apart from this, the company is also planning to incorporate even more AI features into its camera sensors. The long-term business plan of Samsung is to create sensors that can replicate human senses. By 2027, the company’s roadmap includes the development of camera sensors that can capture even invisible things by 2027, the report notes.

Samsung’s System LSI President Park Yong-in recently talked about focusing on the goal of leading the ‘Proactive AI’ era. This includes mastering Generative AI, high-performance algorithms and technologies as well as long-range communication solutions.

SK Hynix has also revealed that it is incorporating an AI processing chip into its camera sensors. This technology will lower the latency and improve image quality while reducing power consumption. The company has been using an AI accelerator in the image sensor to test features like face and object recognition.
As the demand from autonomous cars, IoT, robotics, and XR (Extended Reality) devices increased, the camera sensor market has returned to the growth phase after the pandemic.