Samsung Electronics Co. maintained the status as the world's second-largest vendor of mobile image sensors last year, a report showed Wednesday, as the South Korean tech giant strives to catch up to the industry leader Sony Corp.

In terms of revenue, Samsung, which produces image sensors under the ISOCELL brand, had a share of 29 percent in the complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) image sensor market in 2020, according to market researcher Strategy Analytics.

Samsung, also the world's smartphone maker, was only behind Sony that boasted a dominant 46 percent share. China's OmniVision Technologies Inc. came in third with a 10 percent share.

Samsung's market share was down from 32 percent in the first half of 2020, while that of Sony was up from 44 percent in the first six months of last year.

The global mobile image sensor market saw a revenue growth of 13 percent on-year to $15 billion in 2020 as more smartphone makers adopted high-resolution sensors amid the expansion of multiple cameras.

"Samsung, OmniVision and SK hynix continued to take shares from Sony as the vendor lost key business owing to sanctions on Huawei," said Jeffrey Mathews, a senior analyst at Strategy Analytics. "We expect Sony's market dominance will be increasingly threatened by the rising competition in the smartphone image sensor market." (Yonhap)