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Four from top ten front end equipment companies grew sales in 2005 |
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Apr 04, 2006 at 09:01 AM |
 New data released from VLSI Research highlights that only four of the Top Ten wafer processing equipment suppliers actually saw sales growth in 2005. The market research firm regarded 2005 as a downturn year as overall capital equipment sales declined 7 percent from 2004 to $43.4 billion US dollars.
The wafer processing market is the largest market sector and declined
7.1 percent to $23.4 billion, in 2005, according to the research firm's
latest figures.
Significantly the biggest decline in sales from a percentage perspective was actually Applied Materials, which saw sales decline 22.9 percent in 2005 compared to an upturn year in 2004. Revenues that included support service contracts came in at $4.44 billion US dollars in 2005. No other Top Ten wafer processing company saw sales decline more than 13.5 percent, which according to VLSI Research was Canon.
Another point of interest was the fact that some of Applied Materials main competitors in selected fields such as ion implanters and etch tools saw sales growth in 2005.
Varian Semiconductor Equipment Associates saw sales of its ion implanters increase the most, with 13.5 percent increase over 2005, reaching sales of $437.5 million US dollars.
Lam Research saw sales growth of 1.7 percent over 2004 with Lam sales predominantly coming from etch tools.
Part of the reason for the overall decline in sales cited by VLSI Research was due to the efforts in 2004 to reduce equipment cycle times that meant fewer tools were shipped in 2005 as carry-over orders from 2004.
Companies that had better exposure to memory customers faired better than those that didn't, as memory chip manufacturers were more aggressive in capacity expansions than other sectors, according to the market research firm.
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