SanDisk executives revealed detailed capital expenditure plans through 2010 at the company’s annual financial analysts day, held on February 26th. SanDisk is the joint manufacturing partner of Toshiba for NAND flash memory. Despite an ASP decline of 60 percent in each of the last two years, SanDisk is projecting its own share of the capital equipment burden to increase sequentially, reaching a peak of $3 billion in 2009. 

The former founder and CEO of Asyst Technologies Mihir Parikh is a notable inclusion in a signed letter, proposing a fast takeover of Asyst, backed by The Gores Group, LLC. Parikh is currently President and CEO of Aquest Systems, an AMHS start-up and potential rival to Asyst. 

The final book-to-bill ratio in December for North America-based semiconductor equipment suppliers was 0.85, down from the preliminary figures issued last month of 0.89, according to SEMI. The book-to-bill ratio for January was 0.89. 

Global demand for DRAM and NAND flash is to take a dive in 2008 that will seriously impact memory manufacturers’ revenues, according to iSuppli Corp. analyst Nam Hyung Kim. The weak US economy is to blame, as is significant purchasing cuts at Apple due to falling iPod sales. Apple was the world's third largest OEM buyer of NAND flash memory in 2007, representing 13.1 percent of the global market with purchases topping $1.2 billion, iSuppli said. 

Citing an increasingly fierce competition in the LCD IC driver market, especially from fabless-based companies, Renesas Technology, Sharp Corporation and Powerchip Semiconductor have established a joint venture specializing in drivers and controllers for small- and mid-size LCDs. Business operations related to these products will be transferred to the new company starting April 2008 for Renesas Technology, and by the end of fiscal 2008 for Sharp. The new company will begin full operations on April 1, 2008. 

DRAM revenue in 2007 declined to $31.5 billion, down from $34 billion in 2006, according to market research firm iSuppli Corp. In the fourth quarter of 2007, DRAM revenues declined 19 percent to $6.5 billion, down from $7.97 billion in the third quarter, with sales down 40 percent compared to the fourth quarter of 2006. ASPs dropped 31 percent in the fourth quarter. 

Freescale Semiconductor has entered into a definitive agreement with SigmaTel to acquire the mixed-signal fabless semiconductor company for $3 per outstanding share, representing approximately $110 million in cash value. 

With the final round of capital spending plans in for 2008, Gartner has lowered its forecast for 2008 to a negative 16.6 percent compared to 2007 actual spending and slightly lower than its December (2007) preliminary forecast for 2008 of 13.2 percent. 

Edward J. Swenson, a 46-year veteran of ESI, Inc., has passed on, the company announced yesterday. Mr. Swenson joined the company in 1961 and during his time with the company held such roles as product manager, Vice President (in 1979), head of the Advanced Research Group (in 1985) and then Senior Vice President of R&D. 

Global semiconductor sales reached $255.6 billion in 2007, an increase of 3.2 percent from the $247.7 billion reported in 2006, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). This was the sixth year in a row that sales have grown.