Semiconductor Equipment Industry Report, 2009

The drastic fluctuations in semiconductor industry are astonishing. NAND flash memory stood out conspicuously during the period of 2005-2007, the shipment boosted up, and manufacturers successively invested in NAND field. The emerging DDR2 was once promoted greatly by Microsoft Vista. In wafer OEM, a fierce competition on advanced manufacturing process is under way, and the manufacturers all have continuously pushed forward 90nm and 65nm, so the shipment of semiconductor equipments increased considerably. The coming into being of new packaging forms such as FC, CSP, and WLP also conduced to the development of semiconductor equipment industry. Therefore, the period from 2005 to 2007 was the boom for semiconductor industry, and many manufacturers doubled their revenue. However, while they were in high spirits, the semiconductor industry had started to plunge.

The decline in 2008 was just the beginning, the year of 2009 witnessed more dramatically drop, and the revenue of nearly all the manufacturers was less than 50% of the level in 2007, or even 20%. Especially lithography industry in the front-end area of semiconductor equipment, the top three manufacturers, ASML, NIKON and CANON, respectively fell by 44%, 73% and 84%. Almost all the manufacturers have suffered the loss.

It was a bit better for the manufacturers in the back-end field of semiconductor equipment industry, particularly testing sector, it witnessed a small drop.

The situation improved in the second half of 2009, particularly in memory field, the largest market in semiconductor equipment industry. In IDM sector, Intel is still the largest semiconductor equipment client. Since semiconductor equipment industry is lack of unparalleled applications, revolutionary products and technologies, so it is not likely that the rapid growth during 2005-2007 will come back.