Comment by shrubble
5 years ago
Sony is trying to own the market for image sensors.
The Nikon D850's image sensor was designed by Nikon but Sony made it.
They have a 'firewall' in place between the custom-contracted fab work they did for Nikon vs the team that designs Sony sensors, so that the Nikon IP stays only with Nikon.
See https://m.dpreview.com/news/1234108119/nikon-d850-sensor-con...
Only Canon at this point has stuck with their own image sensor IP and designs, as I understand it.
Not sure where Ricoh/Pentax gets their sensors from, it's believed some are Samsung and some are Sony.
Sony is shipping 2 to 4 image sensors per iPhone. Who gives a rat’s ass about owning the DSLR market when you do that?
And certainly this new production facility will support whatever Apple is doing with the glasses thing.
Where does R3D source their sensors?
http://image-sensors-world.blogspot.com/2019/09/red-camera-s...
TLDW, Forza Silicon. ( https://www.forzasilicon.com/) now owned by https://www.ametek.com/
May not be true for all of Red's sensors. Other hardware is made by https://www.sanmina.com/
FWIW I have read that the Japanese electronics industry specialized into image sensors and the like because of competition for low tech silicon with Taiwan. You need different processes for things like image sensors, sometimes different semiconductor material. This is how you get competitive advantage in the image sensor market without owning a fab yourself.