Expert's Panel

A collection of timely and important topics posed to our panel of experts.

Elaborate on the impact from the use of foundries in the Asia Pacific, notably Taiwan and China, as it relates to the sales approach, marketing approach and other things for equipment manufacturers.

 (ep1065)
1. By the year 2010, 40% of all the chips made in the world will be made in foundries. There are three types of manufacturers. There are foundries and their biggest customer base is currently Fabless Semiconductor Companies. By the year 2010, 40% of all the chips made in the world will be made in foundries. There are three types of manufacturers. There are foundries and their biggest customer base is currently Fabless Semiconductor Companies. There are IBMs, or integrated device manufacturers, and there are captive which means they make their own chips for themselves inside. To some extent these are the IBMs. The current predictions of 40% of world's production between Taiwan and China may not hold if China doesn't change her ways of dealing with foreigners. As it looks right now China, Taiwan, Singapore, and to some extent fabs in Korea and Japan will change from what used to be IBMs to foundries. The impact will be major. It means 40% of what you sell will go to these people and the buying will be very different than is done with the IBMs in Japan, Korea and the United States. They are going to want to buy turnkey modules and integrated modules. So there will be deals made between the materials and equipment suppliers so they can sell the customer a turnkey process.
2. Product reliability and cost will be key. It is really a different culture. The same rules in some way apply, but they get compressed. The price comes up and is a driving force. The turn-around speed is immense in terms of what they require. The relationships from the top of your company or representative to the customer is really important.
3. I just came back from a meeting in Singapore going over the issues with our people. One of the issues that came out of China that was of concern to many customers was that when China truly comes on board, she is going to try to prove herself by having the best prices in town. She will have all the infrastructures in place to bring her products to market globally and she will rack havoc with the market. She is going to buy the business and that will affect everyone, Japan, Korea, U.S., E.U.
4. We need to work really hard on product definition. They will not be purchasing DRAM or logic machines. They are not systems we are used to selling. We have different requirement such as cost in this market segment. Maybe the tools need to be more flexible in that they will handle a greater variety of processes. There will a lot more material variation within the fab. The winners in the future will be the companies that are able to really connect with these foundries and understand their needs.
5. The volume and size of the buys will be significant. We have to be very aggressive in our product definitions, planning on these volumes and cutting prices.