World Chip Equipment Sales Double in Nov., 5th Straight Month
Tokyo, Jan. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Worldwide sales of equipment
used to make microchips more than doubled in November, the fifth
straight gain after 15 months of decline, further evidence of a
recovery in the global chip market, an industry group said.
Chip equipment sales soared 119 percent in November from
the same month a year earlier to $2.30 billion, the
Semiconductor Equipment Association of Japan said.
Demand for equipment is rebounding as chipmakers such as
Samsung Electronics Co., the world's largest computer memory
chipmaker, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and United
Microelectronics Corp., the world's top foundry chipmakers, or
third-party chipmakers, expand production capacity.
The gain in November's sales also reflects increases in
spending on equipment by Intel Corp., the world's largest
chipmaker, NEC Corp., Japan's largest maker of personal
computers and microchips, Texas Instruments Inc., the No. 1
manufacturer of chips for cellular phones, and Motorola Inc.,
the world's No. 2 producer of cellular phones.
Orders for chip equipment are getting a boost as companies
retool factories to make chips with smaller circuit feature
sizes. Smaller chip feature sizes allow more information to be
packed onto chips, yielding faster and smaller chips and lower
power consumption.
That's likely to boost the earnings of many of the world's
biggest producers of microchip-making equipment, such as Applied
Materials Inc. and Lam Research Corp. in the U.S., ASM
Lithography Holding NV of the Netherlands and Tokyo Electron
Ltd., Nikon Corp. and Advantest Corp. in Japan.
In addition, chipmakers and home video-game makers are
teaming up to develop and make chips for future generations of
video games and digital household electronics, creating new
demand for equipment.
Sony Corp. and Toshiba Corp. in March last year agreed to
spend 120 billion yen ($1.14 billion) to make chips for
PlayStation 2, the successor to the best-selling video game
player, while Nintendo Co. is joining with International
Business Machines Corp. and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co.
to develop the successor to its Nintendo 64 game player.
Chipmaking-equipment sales figures tend to lag order
numbers by up to half a year.
The following table breaks down world chipmaking-equipment
sales by machinery category. Units are millions of dollars.
The percentage changes compare cumulative totals for the
April-November 1999 period with the same period a year earlier.
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Equipment Nov. April-Nov. Cumul.
Sales Y-o-Y Change
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Mask/Reticle Man. Equip. 37.851 -30.0%
Wafer Man. Equip. 8.801 26.1%
Wafer Processing Equip. 1,449.070 36.0%
Assembly Equipment 215.958 47.9%
Inspection Equip. 489.397 44.0%
Related Equipment 100.285 12.5%
***********************************************************
TOTAL 2,301.362 34.7% |
