UPDATE: I will check the rumor with my other sources. I downgraded the rumor rating and I hope to give you an update soon. Anyway the source gave me good and correct news in the past. He is reading your comments and he will answer your questions!

The rumor:
As you may remember Thom Hogan “speculated” that Nikon is or will starting to produce their own sensors. A source told us that this is NOT going to happen:

“new D3100 CMOS is indeed Sony designed and manufactured, to Nikon specs. It is basically a Sony CMOS with some mainly cosmetic differences and since not all pixels are being normally used at the edges, it gives the manufacturers the leeway to make the specs change to make them look different. Sony’s policy, for over a decade, has been to sell its chips to competition with 6 months delay. Although Nikon had sample chips to design their products, they could not start making the products during the 6 months of Sony selling products with the same chips, unless Sony has a different arrangement with Nikon, which I doubt. Nikon does not have the expertise to design its own chips, never the kind that Sony designs. Nikon would never be able to achieve Sony’s expertise. See the video codec on the Nikon CMOS. Do you really believe that it is different than Sony’s. It’s just set at 24p; that’s all. Do you believe that Nikon could design chip with this codec? Do you think that Sony would licence them the technology to copy Sony’s design? Sony and Nikon have a strong relationship and work together in fighting Canon. Canon is really nervous about Sony camera releases. The NEXand the 33/55 cameras are and will be marketed totally differently than previous Sony cameras, where Sony just continued the Minolta tradition, until they developed their own cameras, which were from the beginning meant to properly integrate video and still photography, which is the future trend and it is where Sony expertise lies. Total misinformation is that Sony is getting out of FF sensor business. Sony’s future is no OVF on APSC and a pro FF line with OVF. That will be Sony’s main future emphasis. That will naturally include continuous design and manufacturing of FF CMOS sensors. Pentax tried Samsung sensors. They dropped tham and went quickly back to Sony. No company cam produce better sensors than Sony.”