News that Sony has abandoned the development of a new mirrorless camera in favour of focussing on the Playstation 5 has been doing the rounds. Should we be worried?
I'm going to say this right away, the world isn't going to collapse in on itself because of this development. Resource decisions like this happen all the time in every big tech company around the world. Just because we don't hear about it as often doesn't mean that it isn't happening.
What has caused a bit more emotion about this news is that potentially the much rumoured A7S III was the camera in question that was abandoned. But we do not know this for sure, we just have internet rumours to go on. Really it doesn't matter at all. Once resources are back on track development will likely continue and camera fans who are eagerly awaiting it will eventually get what they want.
More importantly we only have heresay to go on as to why Sony has made this particular move. What's special about the abandoned camera compared to any other that it is currently developing remains a mystery. There are clues and deductions, but unless Sony makes an official statement it is all just conjecture. So what do we actually know?
We do know that Sony's actions are due ensuring the reliability of supply of both DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory) and NAND flash memory. The manufacture and demand for smartphones will be adding hugely to that squeeze on demand, so it perhaps does stand to reason that a device like a new mirrorless camera, which will sell much less in volume, would be temporarily pushed to one side in favour of a big hitter like a new Playstation. Profit margins for consoles like this are notoriously narrow, and the demand for components has apparently exacerbated the situation with the new console to almost unprecedented degrees.
DRAM is an important part of modern sensor development. A good example is Samsung's ISOCELL image sensors that it uses in its Galaxy S series. The sensor is broken into three layers. The first, the layer that captures light as per any traditional sensor, and a second layer that converts the information ready to be sent to the main processing chipset. But a DRAM sensor has a third layer of, as the name suggests, DRAM. Having this layer of DRAM means that it can read and store data from the sensor far faster than the main chipset can, and it makes some impressive capabilities possible, such as 1000fps recording at HD resolutions. It also means that data can be moved so quickly off the pixel layer that rolling shutter can be drastically reduced. You can therefore see why DRAM is extremely important, and also why it is in high demand. Shortages were also being warned about last year.
Quite why it has lead to the abandonment of one particular camera, albeit only a rumoured one, is still somewhat puzzling, especially when it is taken into consideration that not only do Sony's smartphones use the technology, but popular cameras like the RX100 VII use it too. So it may well be too simplistic to blame the abandonment entirely on DRAM and NAND shortages.
What does this mean in the grand scheme of things? It's probably not as serious as the headlines are making out. There has been a DRAM shortage for a long while now, and 'chip famines' are nothing new. Sometimes it has been due to demand outstripping supply, while at other times natural disasters have contributed to shortages. In other words this is an ongoing issue across the industry with different chips being affected at different times.
The demands placed on chip manufacturers are huge, simply by dint of the fact that there are such a huge number of electronics components currently being made. Will this mean that we will never see the mysterious mirrorless camera? It's doubtful. A company like Sony isn't stupid. The market will get its long awaited successor to the A7S III or whichever successor comes to fruition if it deems to be in demand. You just might have to wait a little longer.