With Android-based smartphones vendors expected to incorporate 3D sensors into their smartphone models following Apple's adoption of TrueDepth facial recognition system of iPhone X, Taiwan players in the related supply chain, including upstream suppliers of gallium arsenide (GaAs) wafers and makers of VCSEL (vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser) components, as well as those providing backend packaging and testing of DOE (diffractive optical element) and WLO (wafer level optics) components are poised to embrace tremendous business opportunities in 2018, according to the supply chain sources.

The sources said the US laser diode supplier Lumentum is now the only company that has won orders from Apple for VCSEL components as part of 3D modules for iPhone X. As a contract manufacturer of the component, Taiwan-based Win Semiconductor has enjoyed stable VCSEL shipments to Lumentum in 2017, and shipments are expected to grow in 2018, given that Apple is planning to incorporate 3D sensing technology into iPad, the sources said.

The sources continued that Lumemtum's status as the only VCSEL component supplier for Apple is likely to change in the short term along with the increasing volume shipments of iPhone X devices. This, coupled with the non-Apple smartphone vendors adopting 3D sensors in their devices in 2018, has prompted GaAs wafer foundry houses such as Visual Photonics Epitaxy and Advanced Wirless Semiconductor, as well as other compound semiconductor suppliers including IntelliEPI to tap into the supply chain of 3D sensing modules.

Austria-based sensor solutions provider AMS is actively expanding its supply capacities to vie for orders from Apple and non-Apple camps. As Taiwan-based Advanced Wireless Semiconductor (AWS) is a supply chain partner of Princeton Optronics, an AMS-acquired supplier of VCSELs and VCSEL-based optical modules based in the US, AWS is likely to score robust shipments in the coming year, industry sources said.

Beyond VCSEL components, DOE and WLO optical components will also see great market demand, and Taiwan niche-type packaging and testing service providers such as Xintec in the TSMC Grand Alliance are expected to benefit greatly from backend processing of such components,the sources said.

Taiwan-based Himax Technologies has teamed up with Qualcomm to develop WLO lenses, seeking to capture business opportunities associated with non-Apple smartphone-use 3D sensing components. And ChipMos Technologies has helped Himax enter the field of WLO lenses with its chip-on-glass process, and may therefore indirectly tap into the supply chains of 3D sensing components for the non-Apple smartphone camp, the sources added.

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