Steve - Another small company of which I own a microfraction is JMAR (doing not so well, incidentally); they are in lasers and measuring eq. Naturally I wonder if SMIT has a better mousetrap. Paul Lin, a poster on JMAR offered this insight. Are you or anyone here able to identify which category SMIT's product fits, if either...?
<Hi Dave, the wafer inspection business is large, generally, patterned wafer defect detection tools are divided into two major classes: light scattering (nonplanar) and image comparison (planar). Light scattering is faster and is primarily used to find nonplanar defects, hillocks and pits in wafer or thin films, especially metals. Light scattering tools are made by a variety of vendors, such as Tencor Instruments, Inspex, Hitachi; also JMAR, I think. Planar tools manufacturers include KLA instruments, OSI, Orbot.
Market is large and growing, none has shown the dominant share.>
Thanks
Dave |
