Sony Corp. said Wednesday it will purchase Renesas Electronics Corp.'s Yamagata Prefecture plant for manufacturing image sensors for smartphones and cameras.

The electronics giant will acquire the Tsuruoka plant from a Renesas unit for about ¥7.5 billion on March 31 and invest about ¥27.5 billion on production equipment, Sony said.

It plans to keep 80 percent of about 680 workers at the plant, which in April 2015 will start making CMOS image sensors, key components for smartphones and digital cameras.

Sony, which holds the largest global share in the field of CMOS image sensors, provides the sensors for Apple Inc.'s iPhones.