Sony’s world sensor domination plan made one step further. They announced the definitive acquisition of Toshibas Semiconductor Fabrication Facilities:
Tokyo, Japan, December 4th, 2015 — Based on the memorandum of understanding entered into between Sony Corporation (“Sony”) and Toshiba Corporation (“Toshiba”) on October 28, 2015, the parties today announced that they have signed definitive agreements to transfer to Sony and to Sony Semiconductor Corporation (“SCK”), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony, certain Toshiba-owned semiconductor fabrication facilities, equipment and related assets in its Oita Operations facility, as well as other related equipment and assets owned by Toshiba (the “Transfer”).
Under the agreements, Toshiba will transfer semiconductor fabrication facilities, equipment and related assets of Toshiba’s 300mm wafer production line, mainly located at its Oita Operations facility. The purchase price of the Transfer is 19 billion yen. Sony and Toshiba aim to complete the Transfer within the fiscal year ending March 31, 2016, subject to any required regulatory approvals.
Following the Transfer, Sony and SCK plan to operate the semiconductor fabrication facilities as fabrication facilities of SCK, primarily for manufacturing CMOS image sensors.
The parties expect to offer the employees of Toshiba and its affiliates employed at the fabrication facilities to be transferred, as well as certain employees involved in areas such as CMOS image sensor engineering and design (approximately 1,100 employees in total), employment within the Sony Group, upon the completion of the Transfer.
via Engadget
22 Responses
I didn’t even know that Toshiba has an image sensor department. But I see now it’s all only about samrtphone/tablet and automotive cameras etc. So no real impact in photographer’s world
Toshiba made sensors for Nikon D7100, D7200, D5200.
D7000 D7100 D7200 D52000 are all sony sensor. The same sensor you find in A6000, A5100 and A77II
Nikon D3 and D700 had sensors by Toshiba/Matsushita if I remember correctly.
Matsushita is Panasonic,yesterday they research only.
but today they back to develop new sensor.
The D7000 was Sony. The D7100 was Toshiba. Definitely not same sensor as in the A6000, which has OSPD.
aha, cool – good to know, thanks!
so – Toshiba and Sony feed Nikon, Nikon eats Samsung, Sony eats Toshiba, Canon swims aimless around – it’s funny shark-world
There are plenty sensor manufacturers around. And Canon sensors are not that bad, especially in color department, regardless what many biased people say.
Canon’s color is more to color science side rather than good sensor and actually have a strong red biases, looking good for portrait but elsewhere is meh (IMHO)
Sony is heavy on the green. Have to pull it back most of the time
it’s because Sony sensor capture wider gamut than canon and guess which color is the most plenty out of from visible color gamut? yes it’s green. Sony’s way is to capture wider data/gamut and leave the processing to photographer’s taste, Sony is not for Jpeg shooter.
Olympus is the worst with greens. You don’t know what “pulling back” means until you’ve played around with their RAW’s.
Especially at higher ISO’s. It’s very apparent in skin tones at iso 3200+, people literally look sick.
Canon’s new patent looks interesting, they’re going to use tri-pixel techonology and combine high and low sensitivity pixels together to come up with a much wider dynamic range. It’ll be interesting if it’s not just vaporware and actually works. Could rival or surpass sony’s dynamic range.
D7200 is a Sony sensor, D7100 is a Toshy.
Sony has been lapping everyone else in sensor technology. My A7s sensor is just incredible, you can see clearly in the dark. I’m still blown away by it.
I hope this acquisition leads to even more resources being devoted to advancements in full frame sensor tech. Exciting times ahead!
i guess that will make sony cameras even more expensive :). first, to get back the investment, second, because even less competition and no alternatives now for canikon on buying 3rd party sensors.. 🙂
in other news, Fujitsu & Toshiba is merging with the Vaio brand to go head to head with PC giant Lenovo. Japan sure is (re)emerging as an electronics giant under Abenomics 2.0
In 2004 Toshiba set up what was then the first and most advanced facilty of its kind for over 200 billion yen.
19 billion yen is quite a bargain for Sony.
Refference…imagesensorworld
that would depend on how much debt Sony will be acquiring
with the purchase. In any event, if the technology in that facility is anything like 11 years old, then it’s going to be very outdated. Most likely this purchase comes with a lot of debt and the need for a lot of investment. It certainly won’t be picking up an asset for one tenth of its value.
They will now be called Shibony: The Shinobi of the camera world.
No, they’ll forever be known as Soshiba.