Market research
Overheating is VLSI Research's fear, after reporting its April 2004 assessment. For semiconductor equipment sales, it reports April bookings at $4.01bn and billings of $3.60bn. This gives a book-to-bill ratio of 1.11, compared with 1.03 in March. April's revenues represent 56% growth over April 2003. Bookings were 80% up.
Front-end chip production capacity fell compared with March 2004's 88.5% to 87.0%. The market researcher comments: "Even with order activity slowing down, the industry will not need much more impetus to achieve a 56% growth for the year."
The analysts warn that if Q2 2004 does not show a sequential decline, the market could show a repeat of 2000's "2 for 1" deal, with two years of growth packed into one. And then . . .
SEMI's book-to-bill ratio for North American equipment producers reached 1.14 on a preliminary basis in April 2004. Bookings were $1.59bn, a 111% increase on April 2003. Billings were $1.40bn, up 67%. The ratio for March has been finalised at 1.09.
VLSI Research reports lower sales in the 2003 chemical mechanical planarisation market. The revenue total fell 9% from 2002's $773.2mn to $707.0mn. The market leaders were Applied Materials (65%), Ebara (20%) and Novellus (5%). Novellus entered the market in late 2002 through its acquisition of Speedfam-IPEC.
The semiconductor process control market declined 30.1% to $2.31bn in 2003, according to the Information Network. The integrated non-metal film metrology sector (1.2% of the process control market) grew 39.4% to $27.9mn with expectations for 2004 at $39.9mn (+42.9%). Macro defect inspection grew 66.6% to $26.5mn.
Japan is the key area for organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs), according to research by iSuppli. A study of the patent coverage for OLEDs shows that 70% are registered in Japan, 57% in the USA and 29% in Europe. Companies also sought coverage in China (12%), Taiwan (7.5%) and Korea (3.7%). Kodak is considered the key inventor and dominant patent holder - a position that could change soon with the expiry of some of the basic technology patents.
The market researcher estimates that 17.3mn OLEDs were sold in 2003. The prospect for 2004 is 36.2mn units and in 2010 366mn.
