AMAT's two biggest gaps, IMO, are litho, including resist processing (already discussed in detail here), and cleaning. The cleaning segment is pretty fragmented, with Tokyo Electron, FSI, GaSonics, and others all playing in different parts of it.
I haven't thought about this enough for anything but a few off the cuff comments. TEL is a serious AMAT competitor, especially in Japan. Even if they were small enough to swallow up, which I don't think they are, there would quite possibly be Japanese antitrust concerns. FSI is primarily wet processing, while GaSonics is primarily dry stripping. Both seem to be riding out the downturn reasonably well, so neither is an obvious takeover candidate, but nor are they obviously invulnerable.
Katherine |
