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Although little actually changed in the form of rankings amongst Gartner’s Top 10 semiconductor equipment suppliers for 2007, the released findings are notable in that ASM International entered the list at number 10 with revenues of just $1 billion and moved up three positions compared to 2006. Canon was the victim, being demoted from the Top10 rankings. No changes were recorded amongst the top 5 equipment suppliers, noted Gartner.

 The wafer fab equipment (WFE) segment grew 10 percent but the back-end equipment (BEE) declined 8.1 percent in 2007, compared to 2006. The packaging and assembly equipment (PAE) segment declined 3.7 percent, and the automated test equipment (ATE) segment fell 13.7 percent.

“Uneven investment behavior, with weakness in logic/foundry and strength in memory-related capacity spending, once again impacted relative equipment market share positions, as well as the regional sales picture in 2007,” said Klaus Rinnen, managing vice president for Gartner's semiconductor manufacturing research group. “45nm investments ramped more meaningful in 2007 but still accounted for less than 10 percent of total investment for the year. Regionally, investments in North America, Japan and Europe were below market, while Asia/Pacific again led the charge with 14.9 percent growth.”

Worldwide capital equipment spending totaled $44.5 billion in 2007, a 5.9 percent increase from 2006 revenue of $42.1 billion, according to Gartner. This was primarily fuelled by memory manufacturers.

 Dainippon Screen reversed a business decline from 2006 with growth of 21 percent in 2007. Nikon followed suit with an 18.2 percent revenue increase in 2007 compared to 2006. Tokyo Electron continued double digit growth levels, nearly twice the rate of the overall market.

KLA-Tencor grew share in process control market even though that market segment performed slightly below market in 2007. According to Gartner, Lam Research outperformed the market as it expanded its share in the Etch market.

The majority of companies in the Top 10 saw revenue growth lower in 2007 compared to 2005-2006 figures. Advantest continued to see revenues decline, while Novellus Systems saw the biggest fall of 13.6 percent year-on-year. Even Applied Materials saw growth slow considerably from 2005-2006 levels, posting growth of only 4.5 percent, losing share as it underperformed the market in 2007, according to Gartner.