Asyst Technologies Wins Multiple Spartan Sorter Orders Totaling $2.5 Million
Thursday April 29, 6:00 am ET
Significant Wins for the New 300mm Product Highlight Asyst's Return to Technical Leadership in the Sorter Market
FREMONT, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 29, 2004-- Asyst Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq:ASYT - News), a leading provider of integrated automation solutions that enhance semiconductor and flat panel display manufacturing productivity, announced today that it has received orders from multiple customers for its new 300mm Spartan(TM) Integrated Sorter totaling approximately $2.5 million. The company estimates that Spartan has captured approximately 10% of the current worldwide sorter market in its first quarter of volume production, and has an objective of achieving at least 20% share of this estimated $100 million market in 2004.
Spartan was designed from the outset as a unified wafer management solution -- embodying the minimum scale and complexity necessary to accomplish its core job of moving wafers as cleanly and as quickly as possible. This improves reliability and maximizes efficiency, while delivering industry-leading cleanliness with the lowest particle levels. This is in contrast to traditional sorters, which rely on the labor and cost-intensive process of integrating multiple off-the-shelf components such as loadports, atmospheric robots, mini-environments and control software to create a highly complex wafer sorting machine, which inevitably leads to lower reliability, higher cost-of-ownership, and sub-optimal performance.
Wayne Nobles, vice president and general manager, systems division, for Asyst said, "Asyst has participated in the sorter market with earlier generation technology for sorting both 200mm and 300mm wafers, and we leveraged this technology to a leadership position in the 200mm sorter market in the last upturn. In our discussions with customers, it became clear to us that 300mm fabs would require a new generation of sorter technology, not only to deal with the larger wafer size, but to provide higher levels of cleanliness, enhanced wafer safety, and lower cost of ownership. Spartan is the result of this next generation thinking. Spartan's industry-leading particle performance -- combined with low cost-of-ownership driven by its high reliability, serviceability and maintainability -- makes it what we believe is the most powerful sorter available on the market today."
Asyst's Spartan is available in multiple configurations to meet various chip manufacturers' requirements. The Spartan Sorter features an optimized mini-environment with better than ISO Class 1 performance. The Spartan also incorporates dual, ultra-thin edge-grip wafer handling for "fast swap" wafer exchanges or movement of two wafers simultaneously. This capability promotes high throughput and mitigates risk of wafer damage.
About Asyst:
Asyst Technologies, Inc. is a leading provider of integrated automation solutions that enable semiconductor and flat panel display (FPD) manufacturers to increase their manufacturing productivity and protect their investments in materials during the manufacturing process. The company offers a broad range of 200mm, 300mm and FPD solutions that enable the safe transfer of material and information between process equipment and the fab line throughout the fabrication process, while reducing damage caused by human, environmental, mechanical and chemical factors. Encompassing isolation systems, work-in-process materials management, substrate-handling robotics, automated transport and loading systems, and connectivity automation software, Asyst's modular, interoperable solutions allow chip and FPD manufacturers as well as original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs, to select and employ the value-assured, hands-off manufacturing capabilities that best suit their needs. Asyst's homepage is asyst.com
"Safe Harbor" Statement under the Private Securities Litigation
Reform Act of 1995
Except for statements of historical fact, the statements in this press release are forward-looking. Such statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the statements made. These factors include, but are not limited to, anticipated product performance and operability, the anticipated size of the market for semiconductor wafer sorters and the company's ability to increase its share of the market, and other factors more fully detailed in the company's annual report on Form 10-K (as amended) for the year ended March 31, 2003, and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
"Asyst" is a registered trademark of Asyst Technologies, Inc. "Spartan" is a trademark of Asyst Technologies, Inc. |
