Online information source for semiconductor professionals

Applied Materials retained the top spot of semiconductor equipment suppliers, according to the 2007 rankings by revenue from VLSI Research. Tokyo Electron and ASML remained in second and third spots respectively, the sixth consecutive year all three leading suppliers retained their positions, according to the market research firm. Read more >>

Chartered Semiconductor has honored its best suppliers for 2007 at a ceremony held in Singapore. In the equipment category, the Gold Supplier Award went to Dainippon Screen Singapore with Applied Materials Asia the follow-up Silver Supplier Award winner.  Sumco Techxiv and National Oxygen picked up the Gold and Silver awards respectively in the materials supplier category. In the services category the Gold award went to IBM Singapore and the Silver Award to Hewlett-Packard Singapore. Read more >>

Stockholders of both ON Semiconductor and AMIS Holdings have voted on the proposed acquisition of the latter by ON Semiconductor. With more than 90% of the votes leaning in favour of the stock-for-stock merger, the companies expect the matter to be closed by March 17th subject to satisfaction of customary closing conditions. Read more >>

Aquest Systems is planning to open a dedicated 20,000 square foot demonstration center in Taichung, Taiwan to enable the start-up fab automation specialist to showcase its next-generation hi-volume AMHS solutions for 300mm fabs. Read more >>

Gartner has made a downward revision to its semiconductor market growth expectations for 2008, citing worsening macro-economic conditions in North America and continued oversupply conditions in both NAND and DRAM. The market research firm is now projecting growth of only 3.4 percent in 2008, compared with its previous forecast of 6.2 percent at the end of 2007. Read more >>

The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) has said that worldwide sales of semiconductors in January were $21.5 billion, just 0.03 percent higher than January 2007, and that sales would have been 8.1 percent above last year’s figure if memory devices had been excluded from the figures. Read more >>

Gartner has reduced its NAND flash growth forecast by half for 2008 due to oversupply conditions in a softening market that is not expected to relent until the third quarter of 2008. Gartner’s previous projection showed close to 30 percent growth for the NAND market in 2008 but the market research firm now believes that a worse than expected pricing environment will cut growth levels to less than 15 percent for the year. 

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Asyst Technologies has said that an unsolicited offer had been rejected by its board of directors for all shares in the company. Asyst said that Gores Group and Aquest Systems’ offer was inadequate and significantly undervalued the company. Read more >>

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. Read more >>

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. Read more >>