Robert - I haven't had a chance to catch up on the thread as of yet so your question may have been answered already. ETEC and UTEK will be competitors in the mask/reticle making arena with what I beleive to be 2 distinctions.
1. ETEC never really had any competition until UTEK stepped up to the plate. They have dominated the mask making arena, IMO, and now UTEK stands a good chance of picking up some marketshare (we can only hope it is like that of the disk drive TFH sector).
2. The UTEK Ultrabeam system, again IMO, offers definite cost and process technology/capability advantages over the existing ETEC product offering. UTEK, IMO, will be a FIERCE competitor and be a HUGE problem for ETEC.
ETEC has history and customer loyalty working for it with product lead times on the negative side. I do not beleive UTEK has much of an uphill battle to overcome. My understanding is that ETEC passed on the opportunity to get involved with the Ultrabeam percursor comany and that they may live to regret it.
Of course, this is my very unbiased opinions.<GGG>
Seriously though, my background is in lithography and I do have fresh contacts that agree with me and my assessment. I also have tweaked a few contacts at the major mask houses and all of them are open to the possibility that UTEK has something to offer that is of use to them.
Andrew
BTW-#647 and #646 bear consideration. IT is always tough to displace the market leader but it is not impossible if COO and throughput is what is being offered. I need time to formulate some questions and to re-publish excerpts from the latest UTEK newsletter they send out to people like me, professionally. Also, I am reminded of the responses given by ETEC personnel at their last earnings conference call when the UTEK subject was mentioned. With everything I read on the ETEC thread, I would like someone from ETEC to categorically state that they passed on Lepton because the technology was inferior. My somewhat informed sources lead me to beleive this was possibly a blunder on their part. |
