On February 26, 2026, SmartSens, a leading domestic CMOS image sensor (CIS) company in China, officially issued price increase notifications to its partners, announcing differentiated price adjustments for select CMOS products in its two core application areas-smart security and AIoT-effective March 1, with increases ranging from 10% to 20%.

Notably, SmartSens adopted a differentiated pricing strategy this time: products manufactured by Samsung's foundry will see a uniform price increase of 20%, while those produced by Nexchip's foundry will see a more moderate increase of 10%. This differentiated pricing is not simply a pass-through of costs, but rather a precise calibration based on different production line cost structures, market positioning, and strategic intentions. In its notification, SmartSens explicitly stated that this move aims to ensure the company's ability to continue providing customers with stable, high-quality products and services.

Drivers Behind the Price Increase

In its price increase letter, SmartSens identified the core driver as "supply chain imbalances triggered by severe global shortages in memory chips." This assessment reveals deep-seated contradictions in the current semiconductor industry chain: memory chips and CIS are both major customers of foundry services, and the crowding-out of memory production capacity has directly driven up wafer foundry prices-a transmission mechanism that has exacerbated the scarcity of upstream foundry resources.

Indeed, the global foundry industry has entered a comprehensive price increase cycle. Prices for 8-inch wafer foundry services have generally risen by 5% to 20%, with mature processes seeing particularly acute supply-demand imbalances, with some order price increases reaching 20%. Leading foundries including TSMC, Samsung, and SMIC have all followed suit with price adjustments. As a fabless design company, SmartSens directly bears the pressure of rising upstream foundry costs. Meanwhile, the CIS market is experiencing an "overall supply shortage" situation, with multiple demand drivers-including upgrades in the mobile phone replacement market, explosive growth in automotive electronics, and high-speed growth in industrial vision-overlapping, while mature process capacity expansion on the supply side remains constrained, further intensifying market tightness.

Summary

SmartSens's price increase marks the spread of the chip price hike wave from memory chips and power semiconductors to the CIS track. Previously, power semiconductor manufacturers such as Silan Microelectronics and NCEPower had successively announced price increases. As a leading domestic CIS company, SmartSens's pricing strategy may trigger a chain reaction in the industry, with other domestic CIS manufacturers potentially following suit with price adjustments.

Going forward, as downstream demand in smartphones, automotive electronics, AIoT, and other sectors continues to be unleashed, and with the acceleration of domestic substitution, domestic CIS manufacturers represented by SmartSens are embracing a historic opportunity for value revaluation.

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