Sony Image Sensors - Shortages Beginning To Hit

[Cliff Totten]

We all know about that horrible earthquake that hit that Sony Kumamoto sensor factory recently. Well?, it seems that stock in Sony camcorders are now beginning to be affected. A quick check at B&H for some of Sony's higher selling models turns up a "back order" status with most having a 3 month wait.

PXW-FS7 with 28-135 lens - Expected availability: September 2016

PXW-FS7 Body - Ship Time: 7-14 business days

PXW-FS5 Body - Expected availability: September 2016

PXW-FS5 with 18-105 lens - Expected availability: September 2016

PXW-Z150 - Expected availability: September 2016

The Z150 was only on sale for about two weeks before they sold out so there are only a relatively small number manufactured so far. (I'm glad I jumped on mine when I did, 5 days after it hit the streets)

What do you folks think? At some point this will hit the A6300 and possibly the A7 series? It's going to be a long summer with camera stores hurting for stock to sell. B&H will always be fine but what about the smaller stores?

What about all the other camera companies that HATE to admit they buy Sony sensors, if their stocks get affected, this could be an indicator of who they really buy their sensors from. ;-)

CT

[Jim Martin]

No issues with Canon....and I suspect that will increase their sales, especially the C300 MK II.....

Jim Martin
EVSonline.com

[Noa Put]

Originally Posted by Cliff Totten

B&H will always be fine but what about the smaller stores?
What about all the other camera companies that HATE to admit they buy Sony sensors, if their stocks get affected, this could be an indicator of who they really buy their sensors from. ;-)

I guess when you need a camera now or in the coming months that might be inconvenient but honestly I don't know why anyone that is not in the market for a new camera this year should care? and anyone who is has to wait a a bit longer, there are worse things to worry about. Lets hope they won't raise their prices during that period like they did with the pc harddrives a few years back when there was a shortage.

[Dave Blackhurst]

I've already seen ridiculous inflated "ask" prices on RX10M3's.... so yes, sellers will take advantage of limited supplies. That's the "market" for you.

But, as suggested, unless you are in a "must buy something now" mode, a couple months is not a big deal. It does seem to have "firmed up" used prices a bit on some models!

[Cliff Totten]

I dunno, I can imagine someone saving up for an FS7 or a new Z150 and being pretty bummed that they will now need to wait three months until shipments start again.

I guess September's arrivals will go to the back order people first all around the world. Who knows? Maybe B&H will be sold out until October or November.

Wonder if this will eventually reach the Alpha's A7 series and A6300?

[Noa Put]

Originally Posted by Dave Blackhurst

I've already seen ridiculous inflated "ask" prices on RX10M3's.... so yes, sellers will take advantage of limited supplies. That's the "market" for you.

When the harddrives became hard to get by in 2011 due to the floods the entire harddrive market was affected so they could afford raising the price on all drives as there was no alternative. Now it's only Sony and any Sony sensor buyers that will feel the consequences and if they would raise prices they can cause buyers to move to competitors, it's not that I care if they would do, but I think Sony would just take the loss but it might be the resellers that are trying to make some extra cash out of it while it lasts.

[Mark Watson]

There are worse ways to be affected by an earthquake. If my new camera faced some delay, that's just one more thing to take into consideration, among many other considerations. Not a big deal, and the big players will sort it out. Rental houses might get more business from it, so there's a positive side.

Mark

[Cliff Totten]

If Sony is in a jam with limited stock, I wonder if they will favor their "smaller" dealers to help them survive. B&H is so diversified that they will have no trouble dealing with a 3 month drop off in shipments.

The smaller "mom and pop" shops with 15 employees will be hurt much worse. I dunno, I'd guess that Sony would get those guys supply first?

[Noa Put]

The smaller "mom and pop" shops with 15 employees will be hurt much worse

In my country there is no B&H equivalent, there are a few bigger players that have a store and push a lot of sales through their internet webshop but you hardly can find any small local shops that sell photo/videogear as they cannot compete with the big boys. There is not much difference between these webshops in terms of availability so I"m sure that if there will be a shortage for a while all stores would be affected.

[David Heath]

Let's put all this into perspective - there have been problems, and some supply issues, but the damage wasn't that severe and by all accounts seems now to be largely fixed anyway! See GREAT news! Sony sensor fab struck by earthquake will be back online soon

◾ However, as of May 9, 2016, testing operations, which are one of the back-end processes carried out on the upper layer of the building, have resumed and other back-end processes, such as assembly, are also expected to restart sequentially beginning May 17, 2016.


◾ Wafer processing operations located on the lower layer of the building are expected to restart sequentially beginning May 21, 2016.

From which I assume the factory is now firmly back into production, and has been for several weeks? (So with the earthquake mid-April, the outage was not much more than a month.)

Given some elasticity of supply due to stock levels, I therefore can't see why any stock shortages should therefore be more than a few weeks from a consumers point of view?