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AMAT tops VLSI Research's FPD tool suppliers list for first time |
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May 10, 2007 at 09:37 AM |
Applied Materials can stick another feather in its big kahuna headress with the news that it topped VLSI Research's Top 10 list of FPD equipment suppliers for the first time.
The leading semiconductor tool company for years, AMAT edged out number-two panel equipment maker Ulvac by $35 million, with a billion-dollar-skirting total of $989 million in sales. Jumping from the number-three slot in 2005, AMAT enjoyed a virile 31% pop from its 2005 numbers.
The sector as a whole dropped 5% to $7.7 billion due to bulbous inventories and overheated capacity at the panel fabs and infirm second-half demand, according to VLSI. Canon took it on the chin, reeling from a sales figure freefall of 45% last year and seeing its standing in the Top 10 plummet from the top slot to the number-five position.
With AMAT also selling modified panel-making tools into the solar/photovoltaics market at a healthy clip, the company's combined revenues in those two sectors should easily jump over the billion-dollar mark this year. While everyone's going ga-ga about the company's push into solar, don't forget about a longer-term, emerging-tech play that might result in a few tool sales for AMAT this year but could lead to many, many more down the line: flexible electronics made with roll-to-roll processing equipment acquired in the Applied Films deal. R2R-fabricated products will include plastic displays, thin-film photovolatics applied to a number of surfaces, sensors, roll-up e-readers, wearable "chips," medical devices, and just about anything else that one can imagine embedded with circuitry.
As paradigm shifts go, this one will be huge, not evolutionary but revolutionary in nature, with AMAT likely to be sitting in the catbird seat as a key equipment supplier in the manufacturing foodchain.
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