(Original title: Sony’s Plan to Wring More Revenue From Chip Arm: Subscriptions)

Netease Technology News, June 25, according to foreign media reports, Sony is developing subscription-based services for its semiconductor customers, the move shows that the company is no longer just satisfied with the sale of chips, but hopes to start from $10 billion worth of chip business To extract more income.

Sony established a new team last year to explore a new business model for teams that provide image sensors for Apple iPhone, Hasselblad V cameras and other products. Sony is a leader in the global smartphone camera market, but it is susceptible to equipment upgrade cycles and is overly dependent on several major brands such as Apple and Huawei.

Hideki Somemiya, head of Sony’s new plan, said the company is currently building more comprehensive products, including software platforms that support and enhance the capabilities of these sensors.

Sony’s goal is to become a solution provider for companies that want to use sensors and analytics to optimize their business. It not only provides hardware for the latter, but also provides software and fee support to them, similar to Amazon AWS or Microsoft Azure to support enterprise online needs The way. Somiye said that in addition to traditional photographic sensors, opportunities are particularly great in emerging areas such as autonomous driving, factory automation, and retail planning.

He said: "Most of our sensor business today depends on the revenue of our five largest customers, who will buy our products as we develop the latest sensors. To succeed in the solutions business, we need to jump out of this Product-oriented approach."

This means that Sony wants to cultivate a service relationship as it does for its PlayStation Plus consumer business. PlayStation Plus has more than 40 million paying subscribers. Due to the high expectations for PlayStation 5, the hardware sales of the gaming department are in a slump, and a large user base can help the department maintain stability. Somiye’s goal is to raise the company’s semiconductor division to a self-sufficient income level.

Somiye added: "We often receive customer inquiries, including how they use our products, such as polarization sensors, short-wave infrared sensors and dynamic vision sensors. Therefore, we provide them with practical support and custom tools."

Sony launched a sensor chip with an artificial intelligence (AI) engine last month, and Somiye said, "This will liberate hundreds of millions of people around the world." They are currently working on finding defects on the production line worldwide. The same sensors can also be used to determine retail inventory and ensure that products on the shelves meet customer needs. Somiye said that for such applications, Sony's after-sales support is crucial.

Customer support is currently included in the one-time payment for Sony sensors. But Somiye said that Sony will provide this service through a separate subscription in the future. He added that the software tools made by Sony will initially focus on supporting the company's own sensors, and then the coverage may be expanded to retain customers even if they decide to switch to non-Sony sensors.

Somiye said: "We should abandon a deep-rooted principle that everything should be decided by Sony. We must be flexible to provide the best possible solution to the challenges facing our customers."

Sony will seek to establish new business partnerships and acquisitions to expand the size of its software engineering team and provide seamless support anywhere in the world. Somiye said that the service subscription of the sensor department is a long-term plan, and should not be expected to be profitable soon, or at least not reach a considerable scale soon. (Little)

Source: NetEase Technology Report